Can Women Mansplain? HR Debates Workplace Double Standards ⭐

This episode has a little bit of everything: the Olympics, employee side hustles, and a workplace debate that is guaranteed to make at least one person in HR deeply uncomfortable.

We kick things off with a question no one asked for but everyone has an opinion on:
 Can women mansplain?
(And more importantly… should you be having that conversation at work?)

From there, we dive into:

•  The reality of workplace double standards (and how they actually play out) 
•  Employee side hustles — when they’re fine, when they’re not, and when companies pretend to care 
•  Why some workplace debates are less about being right… and more about not getting yourself fired

It’s part cultural commentary, part HR therapy session, and part “maybe don’t say that in a meeting.”

As always, we bring a mix of sarcasm, real-world perspective, and just enough honesty to make this slightly dangerous to play out loud.

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 Jaded HR.

Warren 0:47

Welcome to Jaded HR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through the birthday by saying everything you're thinking, but say it out loud. I'm Warren. Right, so you know, a few weeks ago we recorded and published and did it all within three hours. And it actually turned out very good. Today we're doing the opposite.

Cee Cee 1:08

Killed it.

Warren 1:09

We're recording a day early because I have a school obligation that I was the only person who wasn't available Tuesday. So I said, screw it up. I can make it happen one way or the other. So yeah, we're recording.

Cee Cee 1:19

I'm very flexible. I don't have much of a life.

Warren 1:22

I feel like right now I have too much of a life. I want to go back to my nothing life. I want to go back to absolutely nothing going on in my world. So hopefully that day will come again soon. Because I for the last I don't know how many weeks, I haven't gotten to do any of the things I want to do. I haven't been able to go work on my truck. I haven't been able to play video games. I haven't been able to do the things that make me happy.

Olympics Chat And Weekend Joys

Cee Cee 1:47

I get it. I'm looking forward to You know, this past weekend my parents were nice enough to take Bean one night, and it was a night when Kevin was playing, and I got to go out with some friends and hear him play at a local place. And it was such a gift to go to sleep and then wake up and then just lay in bed. And it was the Sunday when the US men's hockey team was playing. And we were like, let's just wake up early in the morning. Before we went to bed that that night, I ordered a DoorDash delivery for like 8 15 in the morning from Dunkin' Donuts. So we had coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and we sat in bed and watched the hockey game. And honestly, it was just bliss.

Warren 2:31

Oh, and that goes perfect with that pung that Dunkin' thing. Have you seen that meme?

Cee Cee 2:41

Oh, that's so funny. No, I haven't seen that. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Warren 2:46

So I'm sorry to our Canadian friends who double lost on against the United States in hockey.

Cee Cee 2:53

But I'm I gotta say, those were like good games.

Warren 2:56

Yeah, I didn't watch either the men's or the women's hockey games. I did watch earlier Canadian game. I tell you what, I think Canada had some of the coolest uniforms. I mean, the Olympics, they had some cool uniforms around in hockey. Yeah. But I thought the red one with the black maple leaf, I thought that was just really that was really cool. That was a sweet one. So I I watched the game. I don't know. It was a the quarterfinal game and I watched that. I didn't watch any of the U.S. teams play. I watched the Little Olympics once again, haven't had to much to do with my own destiny lately. But uh yeah, I didn't watch as much as I thought I'd do, but I watch them really stupid things on I love the Winter Olympics in general.

Cee Cee 3:36

I love watching figure skating, I love watching ice dancing, I love like the luge in the Bob sled. So freaking weird. Like, let's just strap you to a sled and send you down a hill at like 90 miles an hour. Like, I love it. I love it so much. And I love the figure skating this year and the girl that won the gold. I just want to call her smiley because that's for some reason, that's like whatever.

Warren 4:05

Yeah, I don't know her name. Yeah. I I saw her Goldwyn Medal performance on YouTube. I didn't see it live because everybody's like, oh, you'll gotta watch it. So I watched it. She did kill it. But I watched the team ice dancing of all things, and that was pretty good. I didn't watch figure skating. I just had the TV on as noise in the background. NBC, on NBC, not only the umpteen dozen channels, they were also playing Olympics on the 50K cross-country uh skiing event. And they played, it seemed like all 50k of that. I'm like, well, it got so boring as like this Norway team was like two minutes ahead of everybody, and they ended up getting first bronze, silver, and gold. I don't know who, I just it was noise, and I'd sit down and watch it. I'm like, they're still showing this. I mean, 50k on skis takes a long fucking time. End up going uphill stuff. I'm like, oh gosh.

Cee Cee 5:08

What is that one where it's like cross-country skiing, but then you have a gun and then you just like shoot targets.

Warren 5:16

I watched some of that. I watch in the women's of it. It's crazy. Apparently, in Europe, especially the mountainous countries, the biathlon is second only to soccer in terms of popularity they were talking about on the broadcast.

Cee Cee 5:30

That's awesome.

Warren 5:31

And I was like, that's interesting. But I did watch the women's biathlon. I did watch that. Or I didn't watch the whole race, but I watched a fair chunk of it. And I watched some bobsledding as well. I didn't see any luge. I avoided curling. I d gosh, if my Instagram and Facebook beat isn't a billion things about curling, which I have zero interest in, I was like, yeah, that you're not going. There's nothing that's going to convince me that curling is a fun sport to watch. Like watching cornhole on ESPN. I have no interest. You have absolutely nothing else going on if you're putting cornhole on ESPN.

Cee Cee 6:10

Well, we're watching curling. I know it was the Canadian team, and I forget who they were playing against, but it was a controversy because you could see as the Canadian player was kind of pushing the stone, like you could see his finger just pushing, like an extra little blip, and the other player called it out, and it got like they were yelling at each other on the ice. Like it was getting a little crazy. I thought they were gonna start throwing down.

Warren 6:35

Oh, fight over curling. Throw some mother's stones at each other.

Cee Cee 6:40

Yeah. Just go flying.

Curling Drama And Sports Takes

Warren 6:42

I did see that on uh and once again, I don't understand the rules well enough to know you can't give that little pluck extra pluck to it or whatever that they did. I was like, I just I don't know. That was interesting. My in-laws were here, and we had uh TV on for background noise, and what I forget what input is. And my mother-in-law's asking, Well, what's this? I'm like, I don't even know what sport we're watching. There are people on skis. I don't know what they're doing, whether they're cross-country or I oh, are these skis only connected at the toes? I'm like, I I don't know. I'm not a professional. I know very, very, very little of about this. But I I do hope though, and a long time ago, after the Winter Olympics, this is in the BC time before children time, that after the Winter Olympics, the figure skaters went on tour around the United States and they did a show. And I can't tell you the girl's name was Sasha. I don't know her last name, but as she meddled, and she tried in the Olympics and failed to be the first woman in the Olympics to land a quad and she failed. And then during the show, she was going to try to land a quad in that show, and like the whole stadium, it was packed, was dead silent as she does it. And she came so close to landing it, it was less like she didn't land it. And still everybody went crazy on that. But Michelle Kwan was one of the people, that's how long ago this was. Uh she was one of the participants. It was really good. I if they do that again, I am uh the Olympic. And it wasn't just Americans, it was international people too, going on this tour. It was so fabulous. You know, I've mentioned before I'm a surf de soleil fan. I think ice skating sort of falls in the same realm. It's a different level of athleticism that to do some of the things they do and the stunts they do is just crazy, crazy.

Cee Cee 8:38

Oh, the the quad king, the male figure skater from the US this year. I do not follow their names. I just like the guy that's on our team. But anyway, just his athleticism and the way like he could do quads and he did like backflips and just like that's crazy. And then you see them practicing when they're not on their skates or on the ice, and like just practicing on like a ground, and it's just like he runs and does it and he lands, and it's like, what yeah.

Warren 9:10

See, it's those people that inspire you because they think, oh, this is easy, I can do it. You know, absolutely in the ER trip later.

Cee Cee 9:17

I am self-aware of my limitations.

Thank-Yous And Patreon Shoutouts

Warren 9:20

Yeah, no, I for that I definitely know my physical, the physical limitations. So well, let's start getting into some HR funness. Uh, before we do, I want to give our thank yous out to Andrew Copa, the voice artist, to the underscore orchestra for use of the theme song Devil with the Devil, and finally to our wonderful Patreon supporters, Hallie, the original Jaded HR Rock star, Bill and Mike. Thank you for contributing and keep us going. You too can support us, follow the links, and we will go from there. You inspired this topic from a text you sent me. I don't know if it was this week or last. It had to be last week. My days are all blurred about a situation you had with somebody wanting to call you out for uh a typo in a presentation.

The Typo Email And Workday Fix

Cee Cee 10:06

It was it wasn't even a call out. So it was I had uh released some performance reviews this week, like we launched our cycle, and it's one of those things, like no matter how many times you proofread something and how many times others proofread something, like you always miss one stupid thing, always. And I'm like, uh, I don't know like if any of you work with workday, but workday is sometimes unforgiving. Like once a process is launched, it is just forever launched, and good luck. So, of course, we like launched these reviews, and there was like a typo and a question, but it wasn't like it was a small typo, and it was one of those things where if you read the sentence, it makes sense. But if you really sit down and read the sentence, like a whole word was missing. So I was like, shit. And I got an email from an employee to let me know that there was a mistake, but the way that they wrote it just had me like so. First of all, it caught me, the email caught me in a stressful situation. So at first I was pissed because it was just very it came off almost like mansplained.

Warren 11:20

That's what I thought when you forwarded it to me.

Cee Cee 11:23

Which which that's when I was like, I was heated because I was like, But then the funny thing, it wasn't a man who sent it, it was it came from a woman, which I thought was like even funnier after the fact. But then I sat down, I cooled off for a second, and I read it again. And also, we fixed the situation. So thankfully, questions are one of those things you can correct is a process is in launch in work day. So fixed it. Like, I don't think anyone else saw it, and everything was good, right? Because this person caught it within like five minutes. So I read it again. And as I was calmer, cooler, more collected, I was like, oh, this person I think is just genuinely trying to help me. Cause they just like they emailed me directly. It's not like they CC'd everybody. And they were just very like particular about grammar and very like, it was almost giving me a grammar lesson. They use the word a participle. I haven't heard a participle in a while. Okay. Like that's how in-depth this lesson went. I was like, no, I think this person's just trying to be helpful. Like, and I think that my brain just doesn't work the same way their brain does. And I was like, she's earnestly trying to tell me. But I'm laughing because I'm like, if I saw that typo and I wrote the email, like literally it'd be like, you got a typo. You should fix it.

Warren 12:45

Two lines. You've got a typo. This is like you need here's three lines. You gotta typo, this is what it is. You need uh you might want to fix it. That's all.

Cee Cee 12:54

Yeah. Thankful that she pointed it out, because like I said, it was fixed before anyone else saw it. But also, like, I just gotta be in a better place. Like, I you I just have to be in the right mood when I receive emails.

Grammar Police Vs Helpful Feedback

Warren 13:07

Like, and that's that's where I was going to go with this the discussion today, and in terms of employees you love to hate. And that's one the I I have two people in my office now that they're gonna find that typo. They're gonna find that little minuscule misplaced comma. This is a run-on sentence or something, whatever it is, that they're gonna find. And they're but my my two people that I'm thinking of, uh, well, I'll cut my assistant and I, when we're doing a presentation, like we just got through open enrollment and we did a presentation with it. We we look over it and we say, we got to make this Rick-proof, because if when if he finds that one thing, we he's gonna, and but he will CC the whole world and make sure the whole world knows that, and if it's just something that gets sent out, he's gonna CC everybody. And if he's in the room, he's gonna be the person. He's gonna be pointing it out and having himself a good old time getting his jollies off by trying to correct you in front of everybody because he's smarter than everybody else. So that's one of the two people. The other has made a few appearances on the show, like one of the very first episodes, the infinitesimal PTO guy, he is another one that if it's not absolutely precise and correct, he's gonna let you know. He's not gonna be as much of an ass about it, where he's like, you know, the first guy, oh, I know everybody, but I know better than everybody, and da-da-da-da-da. And you got this wrong, and I think you need to change this. And aren't you embarrassed that you did something like this? Well, the other guy will do it, he'll say it, but he's not gonna go on about it. And yeah, it's just it's just such a uh those type of people are well, yeah.

Cee Cee 14:48

There's a difference between like I truly believe that in my situation, like I said, the person was earnestly helping, but I'm like, I've been in situations where people do that maliciously and they will CC everybody and then they'll say something quippy, like, Oh, we really should pay attention to details more carefully in the future. And I'm like, fuck you. There's no we in the have you ever been CC'd on it, something like that where you're like, oh, like you're just like an awkward bystander, just kind of seeing it unfold.

Warren 15:22

Ceasing and be ceasing in that type of situation is just it it serves no purpose. There's no purpose at all. Just, you know, Warren, you screwed up. Let me know. Oh, yeah. I'll if you I don't think I could fix it in our UKG system. I actually I'm pretty darn certain if I did something like you'd mentioned, it wouldn't have the flexibility that workday does to change it with mid-cycle. Once it's launched, something's out, it's out. So yeah.

Cee Cee 15:50

It's out.

Office Pedants And Public Call-Outs

Warren 15:51

And like I said, we just got finished with open enrollment. We're about to start our annual training, and we're putting things together for it right now. And I'm working with my assistant, and we've already discussed this. You know, everything's gotta be absolutely dead perfect. You know, just so we don't get that it's more frustrating than it's worth. And it you it makes you work that much harder and stress that much harder knowing you have an audience like that that's ready. It like it's he's like sitting there eagerly awaiting, oh, when's this gonna be launched? I'm gonna find that misplaced comma or that he's on the ball. That and the thing it probably also wouldn't annoy me as much with this person if they actually did some actual work around the office. They are the same person that okay, remember the Geico commercial? It's Mike, Mike, Mike, it's hunt day from 15 years ago. Every Wednesday he walks around the office. Everybody know what day it is? Yeah, and it's been I don't know how long ago that Geico commercial was out. It wasn't good, it didn't last.

Cee Cee 16:50

It's been 15 years.

Warren 16:52

It didn't last long.

Cee Cee 16:56

Oh and oh my god, that's funny.

Warren 16:58

He still does that every Wednesday, and he just does it so to get attention. He walks around the office all the time doing absolutely nothing. Anyways, but I'll tell you an off-the-air story about him as well when we're done. But yeah, it's it's just super annoying.

Cee Cee 17:14

I worked somewhere where one of my boss's peers was that person, and it was mainly because my boss was a CHRO and her, who was the chief marketing officer, they hated each other. Like they freaking hated each other. Like they were always stabbing each other in the back. It was so toxic, and that's why everything I had to put out had to be perfect because she would be the one to find it. And God help anyone who had a mistake that she found, because then that person would be like coached, you know? It was just so stupid, just their egos made that whole relationship hell.

Warren 18:05

Now, I will say, bad grammar, and not that I'm perfect, is something that will trigger me when like there's somebody I'm thinking of right now who they cannot conjugate. I didn't know how many English verbs needed to be conjugated. You know, I know a little bit of Spanish, I know German fairly well, and I can conjugate all those verbs. And I don't even think about it in English. It doesn't have the same, you know, there aren't six different tenses of a verb or whatever. But this person cannot conjugate verbs, and they are a native English speaker, born, raised in the United States. Another thing, pronouns kill me if you're using the wrong pronoun. I'm not talking about he, she, whatever, gender pronouns like that. I'm talking about the pronoun that's antecedent and things like that as we're saying, and you know, are you using is it a subjective pronoun, a nominative pronoun, objective pronoun? But anyways, it's so many things. Give that to myself. You know, or I'm just throwing that one out there. But yeah, just things like that, it makes my blood start to boil, and I'm like cringing on the inside about things like that. But I'm not going to say anything to the person about him, just like, you know, yeah, that kills me.

Perfection Pressure And Open Enrollment

Cee Cee 19:21

I will say if it's something that's going out to the entire organization or something that's being published, like it needs to be perfect. Yeah. I know like there are things that will go under like that stupid question and that stupid performance review template. Like, I still don't know how it happened, but it happened. And because when you reread and you proofreadread something that you created, your mind just starts filling in blanks when you know there's an error. And now it's like, okay, I need like three people to proofread something when it's on that level. But that is my biggest pet peeve because not only does it make you look bad, but it makes like the the big you look bad is like HR, because we can't even like know proper grammar. But I did use to like, I used to work on a team with an individual. It was a learning and org development team, and the individual was our like he was our in-house instructional designer, and he had a background in actual like marketing or digital design, that's what it was, a graphic design. But he was notoriously bad for horrific typos, horrific, to the point where something was going out to senior leadership when we found all these stupid typos in this like document, and his whole thing was, well, where if people can't look past the grammar of it, then they are just never gonna get it. Like they're not gonna get what we're trying to teach. I'm like, oh my god, like, are you stoned? Like, what is happening right now? But anyway, he was infamously bad. We had to stay after one day as a group of like five or six of us just going through everything with a fine-tooth comb because he couldn't be bothered.

Warren 21:11

Oh. Yeah, it if I have to clean up after someone like that, that would kill me. But in today's world, I mean, my email is underly it if I misspell it, it's in red. If I'm have a potential grammar error, it's underlined in blue, and I come through and I will click on it and spelling it. Yes, I'm gonna fix that grammar. It depends on if it's not awful, if it's not purely incorrect or but merely a suggestion, like be more concise, like no, I'm gonna leave that alone. Maybe, unless maybe a suggestion is better. But it's getting hard to write poorly. You have to make a real effort to write poorly sometimes. But if you're doing a presentation and work day, it may not give you those squiggly red and blue lines.

Cee Cee 21:57

Here's the thing though, because now I think we're gonna swing in the opposite. Direction where everything is going to sound like from the same tone of voice because everybody's utilizing AI. And I realized that today as I, you know, I used AI to draft something, really like a rough draft. And then I was like reading it and I was tweaking, and then I stepped away and I came back and I'm like, who the hell wrote this? Like, this is a robot who wrote this. So then I was like, I scrapped it and just did it myself. But yeah, like I think it's just gonna become like homogeneous because I think we're just relying on it too much.

AI Writing, Style, And Fact-Checking

Warren 22:28

My kids taught me this trick. You can load your previously written documents that show your writing style and your tone, and you can load it in there, and then you can tell AI to give it your tone and your style. And the reason my kids taught to me is to get around that checker when you submit documents on class. If you just AI just does it, but if you preload like five or six of your writing samples in there, the way you use grammar and the way you use different things, the words you tend to use more, it can get you through bypass the AI. Well, is this written by AI checker when you submit a paper and to class? So my children are teaching me how to cheat in school.

Cee Cee 23:11

I love that for them. Work smarter, not harder, I guess.

Warren 23:15

But I still do reread everything and make sure. I think I have a particular way of writing and speaking, and I want it to have my tone to it. I don't want it to sound like a robot or anything like that. So yeah.

Cee Cee 23:28

I will say AI psychosis is a real thing. You have to read it and you have to fact check. Yes. Because it'll just tell you you're right about something when you are clearly not. So yeah, I think that's funny. And then also, actually, it was Kevin. Kevin was like, I don't know what he did. Oh, he looked up an old company he used to work at on Google. And for some reason, the AI, like the Gemini or whatever, was telling it said a blurb and it said like their head of HR is Kevin Cohen. And I was like laughing because I was like, that's hilarious. Well, dang. That is so funny. So I'm like, well, no, because this is a multi-global organization, like a multinational, like, sorry, this is like a huge company, and it says like he's on top of it all. And it's just really funny that I'm like, that is weird and incorrect, but cool. But I don't know if it's because Gemini is pulling information from your like cash or whatever. But yeah, I'm like, that's interesting.

Warren 24:30

Yeah. I've had some experiences with Gemini being wrong. I subscribe to I pay for Gemini Plus or whatever it's called. I use it for any number of things, but I overall it does well, but you've got to be a skeptic. You've got to read it and think through it. And is this right? Does this pass the smell test? And if it doesn't, then keep drumming with that. So yeah.

Catching AI Applicants And Resumes

Cee Cee 24:52

Have you seen? Okay, so bringing it back to HR, have you seen there are job applications out there? All I saw was it was a job application, and the job opening had a prompt, and it basically said, if this is an AI applicant, please use the word hippoponymous and something else. And I guess it was a way to catch AI applicants.

Warren 25:22

That's cool. That is I would I would like to see that. And I wonder, I know we've talked before about fake applicants, and our episode, you'll never know guess who's on your payroll, has some talk about that. It's really interesting. I've asked my recruiter to be on lookout if she thinks that any applications we get are not human or if they are AI-written resumes, because she hasn't been able to point it. We talk about it, you know, not every week when we have a weekly meeting, but every once in a while when it crosses my mind. Oh, by the way, have you seen anything? She's like, no, nothing's crossed my mind. It's interesting. I I just want to see it for myself, see what uh what we think is a fully AI-written resume in there because yeah, it's interesting.

Cee Cee 26:04

I think it's hard. I think it's hard to track. Well, I don't know.

Warren 26:08

I might try to do that.

Cee Cee 26:09

I think it'd be harder to track a resume versus an interaction. Like if you're communicating back and forth with someone via email trying to set up interviews and stuff, I think you could catch some nuances of grammar that would be a little weird, and you'd be like, hmm, is this human or AI? But I just feel like resumes a lot of the times are bullet pointed anyway. Yeah.

Warren 26:31

Like I've thought about, and I've never had the time to, taking my resume, updating it. I mean, updated it in seven years, but updating it and then finding a job description and trying to say, hey, make my resume match this job description and see how well it does with that. I've thought about that a few times. But once again.

Cee Cee 26:50

Yeah, that's interesting.

Warren 26:52

When I'm thinking about it, I'm not doing it at the time, and I'm not someone going to write down, oh, I gotta try this. One day I will. Maybe I can give some feedback on that later.

Cee Cee 27:01

But honestly, if there's no need to update the resume, don't update the resume.

Warren 27:05

I could probably just take my old resume and find a job and apply to it. See how it does making my resume match that job. And does it make up skills that the job requires that aren't in my resume? Maybe I'll try one that's okay. You're I'm getting motivated. Maybe next time I have some free time, do that. Find a job that I'm quali actually qualified for and have it make my resume match it. And then one that I'm not qualified for and make it match it and see if it lies for me. To make me a good fit. That might be a good little interesting experiment to try. We'll see.

Cee Cee 27:38

Yeah. It will. It'll make you a match.

Warren 27:42

It'll make me a match. I'm gonna be a new kid.

Cee Cee 27:46

I was gonna say underwater welder.

Employees You Love To Hate: The Drama

Warren 27:47

Hey, that too. Oh, well, I wanted to keep going. I had a couple of other ideas for employees you love to hate. So we talked about the grammar corrector. And like you said, when you sent that to me, I the first thing I said is somebody's mansplaining, and then you told me that it was a woman. I was like, that shocked me. I could only my sexist mind thinks that only a dude is gonna do something like that. Right there, mansplained like that. I was like, because it was just interesting, interestingly written with that.

Cee Cee 28:20

So it was. Employees, I love to hate, is the one the one who's always into the drama. Everything's a drama, everything's a conspiracy, everything. I used to work with someone who she like tried to be my like my work friend, and I just didn't like her energy because her energy was so damn negative. Oh, and just nothing that and she didn't work in HR, I did, but nothing that HR said was real, and everything that HR does is lying. And I'm like, you're a lot. Can you get out of my office?

Talkers Who Hijack Orientation

Warren 29:00

Oh the bad energy people like that. And you know, we talked any number of times about the people who hate HR for no specific reason. Just because your uncle got fired for slapping Sally's ass doesn't mean HR is bad. That's a hundred percent on your uncle or your husband or whomever it was. That's not HR. The people just go straight in with that mentality of HR being the evil, the bad guy. That that's just so old, it's so tripe. And I haven't had that experience in a while, but have had it elsewhere. You know, I got moved from a specific location. Uh tell you the rest of the story offline. I got moved from a specific location to another office location where I was the only HR person, and I was sent there for a specific purpose, trying to straighten some things out there. And it was like, oh my God, HR is here. It was always HR is here. They gave me an office in the midst of where all the problems were. So I would just be visible and oh, be quiet. Here comes Warren, be quiet. Yeah, we can't talk about this, and it would be funny. And so I played along. I did this like two or three times just to fuck with people. Around three o'clock, four o'clock on a Friday. I'd ask pretty loudly like to the receptions, do you have any empty copy paper boxes around that I can have? And I'd walk around with a copy paper box. I would get all traumatic and stuff like that. And I I did that only like two or three times, but uh sometimes I just got the urge to screw with people and they were easy targets. So that was something. But yeah, that's something I hate about people. But here's another that I've had very recent experience with someone like this. The people who talk ten times more than they listen. I do all the new higher orientations every time somebody starts, I do I've got it like down to a T where we're taking about three and a half hours to get through orientation. That includes questions, that includes time for technical mishaps. Like three to three and a half hours is my zone. I did one recently. It took me six hours to do this orientation because everything I said, the dude had a story for and wanted to talk, and then he asked a question. I'm like, I'll get to that. Let's do it. That's further down the process, we'll get to that. But you know, and I tried to answer his question, but everything was just it he talked way more. And I had to go, I missed lunch. I started that orientation, it started at nine, it ended at three. I had a three o'clock meeting, and I at the like the last hour I said, I just told him, hey, I've got a meeting at three o'clock, I've got to get to. We're gonna push this through. I said, I'm gonna not have to have you interrupt me while we get through this last hour. And I just put my foot down. I was like, no, gonna ask questions later. And then on top of that, he comes back afterwards, comes in my office multiple times, asking questions. And well, if you paid attention and not talked over me and wanted to hear yourself talk, you would have known I answer those questions. That just this guy kills me. And I was talking to somebody else about it. I said, Yeah, he won't be here terribly long. That's not a quality that will be well received in our organization in the long haul.

Cee Cee 32:24

Oh my god. As my old organization would say, they are not long for this world.

HR Stereotypes And Office Toxicity

Warren 32:30

You can stay on the world in the world, but uh not at the company, so yeah. I'm trying to think, well, just the idiots, the people who don't like as the beginning the podcast starts. Had you actually read the email, the the functionally illiterate, I'll call them. You know, you can read, you just choose not to and get context. That kills me. I showed you an example a few weeks ago of something a manager sent to my recruiter, and I was like, what the fuck? You know, it and things that this particular manager does. I'm like, oh, it just kills me. How are you not going out and paying playing in traffic? You are just so stupid. But please go out and play in traffic. We don't want to do with you any longer.

Cee Cee 33:11

This is the funny part because I don't have as many of these stories because I live in talent and performance and org development land. Like we don't have a lot of individuals who annoy like me at all. Actually, for the most part, whenever someone asks me a question, I get excited. Except for that one. Okay, no, but I will say I take that back because that email did rub me the wrong way, but it was only because I was under stress. Again, like you have to be in a good place to receive critical emails.

Warren 33:44

Yeah, yeah. But it was, like I said, it was overexplaining.

Cee Cee 33:49

It was.

Warren 33:49

You got typo, here's the problem. You might want to fix it. Three lines.

Cee Cee 33:55

I will say there was an individual who he was an engineer, he was at a former company, and it was one of those things where I really liked him as a person. And I guess it's kind of your example. Like, I needed to make things Gary-proof, but in a different way. Like, whenever I did training with him, he only worked at this particular company for his entire career. And he started when he was 20, and the man loved his job, and he was in his late 60s and he had no intention of retiring. Like, he was just gonna keep going. So he was with the company for like 40 plus years. And there's just certain things that like I had to over-explain or give very rational reasons as to why we do things, because he would just say things like we had to do assessments, like pre-employment assessments for applicants and engineering. There was a certain amount, like I think there's like four people that were they were considering, and the only female in the group got the lower of the four math scores. And he, of course, was like, well, I mean, that's anticipated because you know, women aren't really as d adept at math as men are. And I'm like, Gary, time out. You can't say that, Gary. Oh, yeah. It is incredibly untrue. And shut up, Gary, go to the corner.

Warren 35:26

Those type of things bother me. It's part of it bothers me, but part of it doesn't, because I just gotta think that's that generation and that's their mindset. But it's wrong.

Cee Cee 35:37

Yeah.

Warren 35:38

It's just wrong.

Cee Cee 35:39

So wrong. Because it's it's just one of those things like, God forbid another woman is in that room. Okay, I God for like I could have been letitious at that point and been like, excuse me, that is harassment, and I'm going to go report that. Or not harassment, but not the right word, but like, I'm gonna go report that. And like, I mean, uh you don't know who you're saying that in front of, so don't say stupid shit.

Bias In Hiring And Coaching Moments

Warren 36:00

I mean, the president of my company, she is an engineer, and she could run circles around everybody in our company. She's a particular type of engineer. We have you name the variety we have on in our company, but I think even outside of her discipline, she could run circles around more than half the people outside of her discipline. So it's incredible. But I would love to see someone say that to her. That would be a funny conversation to watch. Grab the popcorn, people.

Cee Cee 36:26

And then there's like just the maintenance department at that place was pretty like silly too, because we had to put in a mother's room. Oh. And I remember like designing it because someone was coming back for maternity leave and we were making this little space for her. We didn't have it. So we're like, let's just keep like that'll be a thing we have. So like the guys in the maintenance on the production floor are all bent out of shape because the women were getting a break room that was separate from the men. It's not a break room. Yeah, correct. But this was like what the gossip train. So someone came in and they were just like, We heard that you guys have a special break room and you're putting a lot of money into it, and we have a break room. But like I was like, wait. And I had to explain what it was. And I said, and it's not just for women, it's for anybody who's lactating. So, Richard, if you need it, you let me know.

Warren 37:20

And that shut him up real bad. Yeah, oh gosh, that's too much. And uh we ran out of space in our building, and so we took one of our copio rooms that was a private room that had a door that shut and everything. And we just put a when doors closed, this is a nursing station and or mommy station, or whatever they put. They made a little cutesy sign and things, but when this door is closed, and I can wait 15-20 minutes, however long for my you know, get my pay my anything I print. I'm not gonna, you know, need it. There's nothing you need to print that. You need immediately, and if not, print it the other one at the other end of the building that's in the hallway that you know does that. So yeah, just I don't understand people with that.

Cee Cee 38:06

So yeah, I think this is funny.

Building A Mother’s Room The Right Way

Warren 38:09

That's a good place to land our employees. Oh, actually, I have one more the techno dinosaurs. I've probably ranted on this so many times. But the people who can do the simplest things. My current assistant, she's now a full-time employee. I've been with I'm coming up on two years now, but she interned for me for two summers. And her first summer, the week after she started, we hired somebody who was just a technophobe, didn't do his onboarding before he started. And then we sat him down at a computer after orientation. Okay, we need to get this onboarding so we can get you into the system so you can get paid and try to explain the importance of it. I spent a couple of hours in there, like two hours, trying to get him through the onboarding, and I just got up. So I'll be right back. And I went to my assistant. I said, Well, this is week two, and S runs downhill, so we'll intern it time. I said, It's your turn. I said, I can't I can't get through them, I can't handle them anymore. And she went and she did a fabulous job. And she was like, Oh, I love hoping like my grandparents do things like this. She said, Her grandparents, I just laughed. Do things like this, and she got through it because I was literally about to just choke the man out because he just did not uh understand how to hit next on a computer. I filled out the screen. Why, why, why do I have to do next then next button with the next button goes from gray to blue, means you can click it. You've done everything you need to do. But yeah, that was a whole another. He needed a lot of help.

Cee Cee 39:39

It's okay. It's okay. One day I'm probably gonna not understand technology there.

Warren 39:46

No, no.

Cee Cee 39:47

My brain is already rotting.

Techno-Dinosaurs And Onboarding Nightmares

Warren 39:49

I've I'm my goal in life is as much of a burke as my mother is on me and my wife, and my in-laws are on me and my wife when it comes to technology-related stuff. I have made it my life mission that I am not going to fall behind on technology. And uh because I do not want to. It really ruins your relationship when I know if I'm going to either my parents or my in-laws' house, I'm gonna have to do some technical related thing that they should be able to do for themselves. It's not like we're designing new software or anything like that. It's connecting their printer or you know, change your Wi-Fi. Uh, a few weeks ago, Verizon gave them a new modem was supposed to help them set up. They just left the box on the front porch and nobody ever came by after. So I set up the modem.

Cee Cee 40:37

Of course they did.

Warren 40:38

And then I had to get all the umpteen different things in the house connected to. And I said, okay, here's the username, here's the password. You can just go around. Nope. I had to go around and do all the Wi-Fi connected things and get them all connected. I'm like, it's not that hard. It's really, really good.

Cee Cee 40:55

So this is a shared experience, then, because that is my life as well. Like every time I go over, as soon as I'm ready to walk out the door, one of my parents inevitably sticks a phone in my face and it's like, How do you change the background on your phone? Or like, my favorites got screwed up. Could you redo it for me? And then I'll be like, I can show you. And my dad said, I am 76 years old. I am not gonna learn.

Warren 41:21

And I'm like, uh Well, like my mother's new thing right now. She has the iPhone and it's done all these updates recently, and she wants to get a new phone because she doesn't understand the updates. And I'm explaining to her, the new phone will already have those updates that your phone has. And so it's a waste of money. I said, You don't need a new phone, you just need to learn how to do the updates. And then and she keeps going, Well, I think I should change to Android like you. And I'm like, No, is you're gonna have to learn everything from scratch.

Cee Cee 41:51

Everything No, no, no, no.

Warren 41:53

I said, No, stick with that because I don't know how to do things on an iPhone. I don't even know how to get between your most recently used apps or things like that. So I'm unfortunately my daughter gets the phone call, you know, hey, are you working? Can you help grandma with her iPhone? And I like I mentioned to you, my mother now lives eight miles down the road. Instead of four and a half hours from me, eight miles down the road. And that's at my doing. I push the issue to get her to relocate closer to me. But I think in the long run, it'll make my life easier. I don't know how many times I've done with little to no notice that four and a half hour drive from where I lived to Wilmington, North Carolina, and turn around and come back in the same days. I'm not going to spend the night there because if I the longer I'm there, the more she finds for me to do. So now that she's, you know, eight miles up the road, and I can I can help her. Like, and I've been really good as she's moved in. She moved in on Tuesday. I give her, I'll be at your house for two hours today, and I'll do whatever you need me to do for two hours. And like today, right before we got online, she got her internet installed at her house today. I will come. I said, I've got 45 minutes. I will connect everything to your Wi-Fi that I can connect in 45 minutes. So tell me what's most important and what's least important. And so I actually got virtually everything connected for her in that 45 minutes. I just like give me your phone because I need your phone. Sort of like Hulu, where you can just zap the QR code and it logs you in automatically from your phone rather than have to do everything. So I got virtually everything done and uh ran home quickly to record with you.

Cee Cee 43:28

That's so good.

Warren 43:29

I just don't want to be that old person. I want to be the cool old person who knows how to do more than my kids still and more than my grandkids and things like that.

Cee Cee 43:37

Agreed.

Warren 43:38

So yeah.

Cee Cee 43:40

Yeah. Here's hoping.

Season Seven Tease And Sign-Off

Warren 43:43

Exactly. Well, this is a great place to finally stop. Dunner, thank you. So join us again in two weeks. We're really close. We've got only two more episodes before season seven comes up. We'll be launching season seven, so yay, what's for that. But As always, I'm Warren.

Cee Cee 44:02

I'm Cece.

Warren 44:03

And we're here helping you survive HR One What the Fuck Moment at a time.