Jaded HR: Your Relief From the Common Human Resources Podcasts
Jaded HR is a Human Resources podcast about the trials and tribulations of life in a human resources department….or just a way for Human Resources Professionals to finally say OUT LOUD all the things they think throughout their working day.
Jaded HR: Your Relief From the Common Human Resources Podcasts
Weaponized Incompetence
Join us for a lively conversation around the comical and unexpected moments in the world of Human Resources. We share the ups and downs from our daily experiences with humorous anecdotes that anyone in HR—or the workplace at large—can relate to. From the craziness of employees needing their W-2s at the last minute to the intricacies of team projects that spiral into chaos, we delve into the daily challenges and laughable situations that keep us entertained.
This episode also explores the critical topic of communication within the workplace, discussing how misunderstandings about HR processes can escalate into major stress points. We highlight the importance of transparency, accessibility, and effective training to equip employees and managers with the knowledge they need to thrive. With each story, we emphasize taking a lighter approach and finding humor amidst the often overwhelming world of HR.
Whether you're in HR yourself or just someone navigating workplace waters, you're sure to find value and comfort in knowing you're not alone. Tune in for a unique blend of humor and insight, and don’t forget to share your thoughts about your own workplace experiences with us! Stay connected to our social media for more content and future discussions.
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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 write up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to Jaded HR.
Speaker 2:Nice Welcome to Jaded HR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through the workday by saying everything you're thinking, but say it out loud. I'm Warren.
Speaker 3:I'm.
Speaker 2:Cece and we are two burned out mofos. Right now we're just talking. As we teased forever the Diversity Day episode of the Office, we recorded it. It did have a little bit of technical issues nothing I can't get beyond but I was just so swamped I couldn't get to the point of being able to give it the TLC it needed versus a normal podcast that didn't have technical issues. It's just a plug and chug type of thing, but that episode will be coming soon, soon, soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll devote some time. School this week, the last two weeks has kicked my butt, but I've kicked its butt right back. I've got one class like 104 averaging in one class and I've got well, okay, my team project. I despise teamwork. I despise team projects. We wrote a paper and it was a 50 page paper and now we got our grade back today and it was at 88. And oh, team's message we, they, they created a team's thing, chat, and like I'm sitting at work and I'll send my phone ding ding, ding, ding ding.
Speaker 2:I'm like what the hell is going on and like everybody was livid about the the 88. We didn't give a true rubric of how to, how we wanted it great or what he wanted to include or how it was going to be graded. So we were flying blind a lot. There are some things we could have done better, but the amount of effort and time we put into it was just astronomical for an 88. And we were disappointed. But oh gosh, another.
Speaker 2:Because when you get your grades, you see in Canvas you can see your grade, the high, the low, the median, the mean score and all that other funds. Some team got a 65 and I'm like, oh my gosh, I it, you can't. It's past dropping time now you can't drop at the class. I'm like, oh gosh, In the graduate program, if you, your GPA falls below a 3.0, you go on probation and I'm like, oh, I would just be so, so pissed. But that's also probably why I don't like group projects. This is probably only like one person who carried the weight for everybody and it sucked. But I will say as much as I despise group projects. This is a high-performing team and even though we only got an 88, I think our next paper, which is due in a month and three days or four days, April 8th we have less time to write this one. We'll redeem ourselves this time.
Speaker 3:Group papers are the worst.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in midterms and quizzes, quizzes. It's just been everything. So I'm just ready for my spring break and get back, get back to it. So yeah, crazy, crazy, and we're talking off. I'm not gonna go all the details.
Speaker 3:Work has been crazy too to a certain extent, so it was just like oh you know, just throw it all on at once, pile it on sure, I kind of had that feeling today where I was like gosh, march has been a hell of a month and it's like it's only the fourth, you know.
Speaker 2:Like yes, I'm not even going to do those I was gonna say we.
Speaker 3:You know, I always feel like my, my job. Especially there's a lot of ebbs and flows, like I'll be, my hair will be on fire depending on what time of the year it is and then all of a sudden I'll get like a week, maybe two, where it's like crickets and I can do a lot of catching up and I can do a lot of planning and I can do whatever. And I just got off of one of those Like like I had a week and a half of pure bliss and now it's just like ramping up and I feel like.
Speaker 3:I have a hand in a lot of different projects, so they're all happening simultaneously. So yeah, life is just fun.
Speaker 2:Fun Question mark.
Speaker 3:No, it's good stuff, like it's really interesting stuff and I got to be honest. As you know, the cool thing this year with the work is that we're basically taking on this idea of like okay, someone ran something for a couple years Now let's give it to somebody else because everything is good. And like iteration, like people iterate on things, things become better. Also, I feel like it just keeps the team sharp, so yeah. So my boss was like, let's do that. So now I'm taking on a few new projects, I'm kind of giving away a couple things. So I kind of feel like I started a new job without starting a new job, which is very refreshing to me.
Speaker 2:Hey, that, that that is cool. I like when you get to new, do new and different things, even if it's not that different, but it's a change of pace from what you've been doing. I think that's very motivating. I think that's very. It keeps you fresh so you don't get burned out. Oh gosh, I'm doing the same damn thing again. I've done it 3 billion times and I'm over it.
Speaker 3:I'm writing the engagement survey again. Awesome, it's like Groundhog's Day after a while.
Speaker 2:Exactly Groundhog's Day. What a great movie. Great movie. So yeah, yeah. Well, I had four little anecdotes to share today, and I know you had something as well. We can, we go sort of back and forth, but on top of being busy at work for some things, I also got. Just I had a manager who contacted me asking if I would send them a list of all the names of their employees. They have 18 employees. It's a moderate amount and there's not been much turnover or anything like that. I think you should probably know your 18 people. I could probably have named 15 of them easily and been pretty good guessing with the others without looking. I'm like, really You're contacting me for your employee names. What's the problem here? Is there someone at your desk somewhere that you don't know who they are and what they're doing there?
Speaker 3:I feel like this is someone's evil twin who has come to work and now has to like, blend in with the crowd. Now he's asking HR. Oh, by the way, do you know who my employees are? And also, do you have a copy of my job description? What do I do?
Speaker 2:Like who are you?
Speaker 3:You should know this.
Speaker 2:I really wanted to slam my head straight into the keyboard as hard as I could after getting that email, because for better or worse, that's par for course with this manager. Like I said, I think I could get 15, just rattle off 15 of them pretty good, pretty quickly, and I think I'd be fairly accurate. And the other three or four, you know, I could probably stumble bumble through. I don't know if I could get all you know, 18 of their employees, but I ran a quick report out of the system and here's your people. Not that you don't also have access to this exact same report in the system.
Speaker 3:So that was going to be my follow-up question is does this individual have the access to do so themselves? Yes, so this was just a failure on all fronts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like I said, par for course. For this manager, my expectations are rather low. But yeah, I wanted to ask questions, but I didn't want to ask questions and I probably didn't want to know the answer to the questions I wanted to ask. I you know. So I just yeah here's your. Here's your report. It's just things like that that make your day.
Speaker 3:I love that.
Speaker 2:Well, here is another story. It's text time. Everybody Now this year.
Speaker 3:Hey Warren, do you have my W-2?
Speaker 2:I was not asked that at all this year. Actually, I wasn't asked when is it coming In January? I was not asked when are we getting our W-2s? We've had. This is how you find out when people change their addresses and don't let you know because we've already gotten a couple of them, bounce back to us and we oh, your address and this is what we have in the system. Oh yeah, I moved. Well, thanks for letting us know that you moved and things like that. So we've had a couple of those.
Speaker 2:Well, this particular day I was in a meeting and my cell phone starts lighting up. I have it on mute and it starts lighting up and I dismiss the call and it like not two seconds after I dismiss the call, it's ringing again the same person. And I'm like, okay, I dismissed it again. And then it rang again. I'm like, okay, this must be a. And then it rang again. I'm like, okay, this must be a real emergency. So I stepped out. I took the call.
Speaker 2:The person was at their tax place and they didn't bring their W-2 with them. So they needed me to send them their W-2 because they were sitting at the tax office right now at Jackson Hewitt or wherever it is that they go to get their taxes done. And they needed it right then, right there. And I just said, dude, I'm in a meeting, I don't have time for this right now. Well, I'll have to make another appointment. I said, okay, that's fine, it's in your know, and I could tell them the date of the email and the subject line, but I couldn't tell them what the you know. I could give them the groundwork of where to find it. But, yeah, that was. But I was thinking that was oh gosh, somebody got hurt on the job. You know, if they're calling back three times, that's yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, I do. I do have a follow up question regarding this gentleman at the tax office okay follow up question Did this person have access to get his own W-2 himself?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We have an online portal and they were emailed to the employees and an announcement went out. When they were available, an email went out saying they're available online. Here's how to get it it step-by-step instructions as well. So yeah, they, they had full ability to to dyi it.
Speaker 3:so self-service portal I'm gonna say, like I know I am a genius. However, I just want to point out that I am seeing a trend between these two people. You can do this crap yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's. People who aren't computer friendly are really, really, really getting on my nerves. It's. We're 25% of the way through the 21st century here, and if you can't read an email and much less follow the step-by-step instructions that we tried to make foolproof, yeah.
Speaker 3:We try, man, we try, but I will say I don't. If someone honestly doesn't know something, let me help you. I will hold your hand, I will screen share. Let's figure this. Let's go on a journey together, but the weaponized incompetence is something that I have no patience for.
Speaker 2:Well, this pretty much brings me straight to my third little anecdote from recently. You know I will hold someone's hand, I will do a lot of things for people and I'm trying to help them out, especially if it's something new and not everybody does HR in and out. And you know they have these questions. Actually it sort of leads in both my other two stories. But we had an employee who was leaving the country to do some work for us on an overseas site and before they left like two weeks before they left they requested a company credit card to put their expenses on and through our HRS we send them an email to complete their credit card authorization, them an email to complete their credit card authorization. It's like five-page slide deck of the rules and responsibilities of using the company credit card and then like an acknowledgement sign-off form.
Speaker 2:It takes less. Five minutes would be extremely generous. Well, the person never completed it and they never asked any questions because I in HR, the credit card is still in, because when employees get credit cards, they come to my office because I hand them to the person once they've completed their authorization form and that we have it. So the authorization was sent to them like two weeks before. They never did it. They get overseas. Oh, I don't have my credit card.
Speaker 2:And on top of this, this is oh, we sent you an email. I gave them the date and time it was sent to go ahead and complete this form. I said how about this? Go ahead and complete it now. We'll FedEx it to you at your hotel and you'll have it for the rest of your trip. Nothing still. So don't complain to me, HR, when you, you know it goes, they want you to babysit them, Not only you know. Here's the thing. Okay, you need to complete this. Once you complete I mean the email instructions and the verbal instructions were very easy just go in, complete this form. You know, read this five. I think it's only like five, five slides on the little slide deck about using your company credit card, sign the authorization form and I will put that credit card right there in your hand. But no, they want to be babysat so badly.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh so. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, since my next thing is sort of related, I'll take over. Then I'll throw the rest of the show over to you. Yeah, I had an employee contact me about a quote unquote workplace entry. They received and I'm like, okay, I'm starting to get all the paperwork collect, all the information, everything. It turns out it's not related to work at all, but they just wanted to get paid for being out.
Speaker 3:Well, doesn't everybody?
Speaker 2:Well, they wanted to be paid and I understand that. But I think they were listening. They didn't contact HR first. They were listening to the wrong people giving them the wrong information about workers' comp. Well, it turns out that they wanted short-term disability and the company pays 100% for your and our company pays 100% for short-term disability for our employees, so it doesn't come out of their paycheck. All full-time employees get it.
Speaker 2:And I'm sitting there talking and I'm like, and as they're relaying the like, when did this happen? Well, I don't really know. And it started this. I'm like, okay, this is starting to get. You're not selling me, you're not giving me anything to go on, that this is a work-related injury and I just said, hey, I don't think this is going to fall under work. Oh yeah, this person said it would be, it should be workers' comp. No, no, well, I need to get paid. I need to get paid. I'm like I said I will file the workers' comp claim but I am 99.99% sure it will be denied. I said you know, if you want to go that route, I'll support you on that.
Speaker 2:But I think, based on what you've told me, this is you know, you know personal, you know outside of work related injury and you should be eligible for short-term disability and and things like that. But it just took a long time of convincing that that this is. You have not related this to me being work at all and how this came about, but just they listened to the wrong person and of course, that person knows more than I know about. If they just come to me and, oh, I've been hurt, I can't work, da da, da da, we got. Okay, that sounds like it should be a short-term disability. We can get you out and keep you out on that until you're able to come back. But yeah, a whole nother ball of wax. So those are my little four stories I I had for today. I know you, you had something. There's some stuff too yeah.
Speaker 3:So, hi, I have a question. So I'm putting together this training and it's. But well, like I'm kind of reevaluating a training and then gonna see how we can update it, and I was thinking you know what makes the training or anything stick. Go down this rabbit hole, thinking what were the most impactful trainings or nuggets of wisdom that I got from a training that to this day still sticks with me. So that's my question. I'm just curious what have you like? What has stuck with you after all these years?
Speaker 2:And that's such a hard question. I've had some really interesting training experiences, but things that I'm going to take and I'm going to use year after year forever. One of the best trainings I did and this was in the 90s I did the AIRS Advanced Internet Recruiting I don't even know if that's the correct acronym where they teach you to use surf the web to find resumes and things Once in the 90s, before you had CareerBuilder and you had Monster and a few other things. But they taught us how to use WebCrawler. That was the search engine they recommended for using to search resumes and that just sticks with me. I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, how old I am as a kid no, Piled on just in the last five seconds of how old I am but yeah, WebCrawler was actually a pretty good search engine back in the day, pre-Google days. I mean, I think Google was around then, but it was the late 90s so I don't know exactly when Google appeared on the scene. But yeah, they taught the class on how to use WebC for use uh, search for resumes and things that aren't on the job boards and and things like that, so that I thought that at the time I thought this is going to stick with me forever and I'll use it. But no, I'm going to see if web crawler is still a thing if I hit that what that's.
Speaker 3:That was not. That was not a.
Speaker 2:That was a comment on just how fast technology moves, not a comment no, I'll be good with it just just to clarify there is a web crawler out there, a search engine still called web crawler, I don't know how uh related it is to the 90s thing, but no, the one that I probably, and I don't use it formally. In a prior position I was a certified predictive index analyst and I learned predictive index. I got really into it, which is strange, because I went in jaded and thinking this is a bunch of hooey and it's not going to. You know, it's a bunch of, you know, mumbo jumbo and it turned out that it you know it had some it had. I could see the results and they could. I felt it was rather accurate.
Speaker 2:Now I will caveat that to say it was accurate when it was used. It was intended to be used for, but so many managers wanted to use it for things that were beyond the scope of it. But even now we're the company I'm with now we don't use predictive index. We don't, we don't do that type of screening or everything. But as I'm talking to people, I'm trying to sort of categorize them and you know, know how to work with them, knowing that, oh, oh, okay, I'm picking up that this person's traits are more along the lines of this and I can, you know, communicate better with them this way, and so that in that way it stuck with me and I still use it, even though, you know, I'm not a certified predictive index analyst any longer. But that's something that I would say stuck with me. So what about you?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say really quick I didn't use Predictive Index. We used something kind of similar, and I get it, though, because even to this day, I'm like, oh, this person kind of fits this, so I'm going to shape the way I talk to them in a certain way, because I know they might be a little more analytical. So I get that and I think that's so useful. Do you remember what your profile was in Predictive Index?
Speaker 2:Oh, I actually have it saved somewhere, so let's see if I could. I just remember we teased Everybody in HR did it first as we were to guinea pigs for it, and one of the things that said I was aloof, so let me see if I can pull it I I'm aloof.
Speaker 3:Let's see here I'm always like, I'm always the same okay, actually there's always like.
Speaker 2:I was a high A, low B, low C, high D. So my strongest behaviors I'm task-focused, I'm independent, analytical, authoritative and direct, proactive and assertive, independent things like this. But I'll forward this over to you. I really liked it. But in a lot of times when you see things like this, it's what's going to make you a lot of. It gives you things oh yeah, it's so general that you can, oh, they could, you know, sort of like a psychic type thing, and they, oh yeah, that's me, that's me. When they're just giving you you know someone, your name, someone your family has a vowel in their name and yeah, but no, this, this has I will say mine's, mine's pretty dead on, because I'm like, because I did you get like a name with yours.
Speaker 2:No, now they have like labels no, I didn't get well, actually probably in the book either, because they have sales types and things like that, but not, I don't remember the names and I don't have my books anymore. I probably got rid of those long, long ago. As you can see, I did this. I did the assessment in 2012. So this is a few years old, but it's interesting.
Speaker 3:I was the, I'm the maverick. I am innovated outside the box and I am undaunted by failing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like these things. Oh, here's a good paragraph. Warren is a very reserved, intense person who is strongly results-oriented. He's a self-starter whose drive and sense of urgency are tempered and disciplined by his own concern for quality and accuracy of his work. Own concern for quality and accuracy of his work Introspective and analytical, his approach to anything he does is carefully thought out, based on detailed knowledge of all pertinent facts through the analysis of relevant details. So you know, I do think that that comes across well. Let's see. Where does it call me aloof? Oh, Warren may be perceived by others as aloof or distant but in time, earned their respect for his professional knowledge and expertise in the soundness of his decisions.
Speaker 3:He grows on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I like mold. So what was your trading? That stuck with you and you still use.
Speaker 3:So we used to do this cultural, like this corporate culture shaping thing and one of the things that two of the things that came out of it that still sticks to me to this day is assuming positive intent. Like most people, they just want to go to work and they want to do a good job, and then they have other things outside of their life that they want to get to, and very rarely like 0.1 chance that someone is actually out to get you and it's out to make you look bad. So every time it takes a lot to like make me upset. It doesn't happen very often because for the most part I'm just like it's not that deep, like it really isn't so. So that's one of them, and the other one was the circle of control. Like you have to, just there are things in this life that you can control and the only thing that you can control is yourself, and then there are things you can influence and then outside of that, it's just gravity. Like you can't control gravity. You just have to accept that.
Speaker 2:You know I just today finished another audio book and I read this like a long, long time ago James Cabell's Shogun, you know, and they did the Netflix movie on it, which I haven't seen yet. But I redid the audio book and you know they keep talking about. You know, it's karma, it's karma and that I think that's actually. You know, don't let it, don't dwell on it. It's karma, it's going to happen, it's, and then when things are done, they're done. It's karma, it's past, it's behind you. If you don't dwell on things and you don't, I think when people hold on to grudges and you know, oh, this person was mean to me or did something bad to me 20 years ago, okay, yeah, let's move on to that, move on from that. So anyways, yeah, good book. I'm glad I read it again. Now I've got another audible credit. I got to burn for the month of March, or not burn, but I want to figure out what's my next. Listen, I have a lot of those, yeah, but I will say another training that I was involved in, I'll go ahead and say it.
Speaker 2:When I worked at the law firm, they had a very large labor and employment section and one of my favorite people was one of the labor and employment attorneys and we chit-chatted personally occasionally and if I had the opportunity I would go in there and just listen to them and pick their brains and learn from them. You know I loved that. But she did our firm's harassment training and one year we were doing the harassment training and I was the only man in the room so I was picked on and whatever. Because I was, you know, warren. Let's say Warren did this and I'm like no, don't say not say Warren did that. But it was all good, we had, everybody had a good time, it didn't offend me, my feelings weren't hurt, I thought it was funny as hell a lot of the time and stuff like that Love that.
Speaker 2:But once again, things you probably wouldn't do today with it, and I was like no, let's not say Warren did this, but I got picked on because once again I was the only male in the room. But yes, funny, fun stuff.
Speaker 3:Love it there.
Speaker 2:So Well, do you have anything else that you want to cover today?
Speaker 3:I have nothing else. I'm tired. I've been in meetings all day. I want to go drink a glass of wine and do nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what did you have that episode? An old-fashioned. You've got to have a oh yeah, the old-fashioned, A good old-fashioned episode. See we to have a good old-fashioned episode.
Speaker 3:See, we need to do just like a virtual happy hour with listeners and just see what happens.
Speaker 2:That's magic, hey that's a great suggestion. If you want to do a virtual happy hour, reach out to us on our social media Instagram, hr. On Instagram the show notes are. The links are in the show notes and CC's Boozy HR links in the show notes. Reach out to us. That sounds like a damn good idea having a virtual happy hour.
Speaker 2:We did one once upon a time and it was a bunch of friends of Patrick's mind that we did one year and that was a little bit, not a little bit. It was a lot of fun doing that. So, yes, I'm all in for that, for it, but it was a lot of fun doing that. So, yes, I'm all in for that. So let's see, thank our Patreon supporters Hallie, the original GDHR rockstar, bill and Mike, also supporting us on Patreon. So, thank you very much. You all help make this happen. Also in the show notes our links to support us on Patreon, among various other places. You can support us, but also you can leave us a review.
Speaker 2:I have not checked our reviews in a couple of weeks to see if there's any new ones, but I will check that before the next episode. And well, the next episode might be the Diversity Day Office Free Watch, but I will get to that just as soon as I can and get that, get that published, edited, publishing out the door. So yeah, otherwise we will talk to you in two more weeks and we have some a little something special coming up in the very near future, so stay tuned for that as well. The intro, the introduction, is done by, and Andrew Culpa, and the music is the underscore orchestra song double to double. So now I will say, as always, I'm Warren.
Speaker 3:I'm Cece.
Speaker 2:And we're here helping you survive HR one. What the fuck. Moment at a time. Bye.
