The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast by 2 Lawyers
"The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast", hosted by attorneys Arta Wildeboer and Ryan Ellis, offers expert insights into human resources issues and their legal implications, providing valuable guidance for navigating the complex intersection of HR practices and employment law. This informative series is essential for HR professionals and business managers seeking to understand and prevent legal challenges in the workplace.
The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast by 2 Lawyers
Ok, Hear Me Out. It's Like Tinder...but for finding a Lawyer
Here is the description of the episode that Chat GPT came up with when I asked it to read the transcript:
Dive into the dynamic world of human resources and employment law with a compelling podcast for HR professionals, legal advisors, and business leaders. In this insightful episode, hosts Ryan Ellis and Arta Wildeboer, seasoned experts in the field, navigate through the complexities of corporate legalities and HR nuances.
- Decoding Company-Counsel Relationships: Unravel the intricate relationship between companies and their legal counsel. The discussion provides a deep dive into the roles of general and outside counsel, highlighting how these key players collaborate to steer companies through legal challenges.
- Mastering Employee Termination: Learn strategies to mitigate litigation risks associated with employee termination. The hosts emphasize the importance of empathy and effective communication, offering valuable tips for handling sensitive dismissals with professionalism.
- HR's Decision-Making Boundaries: Explore the critical role of HR in organizational dynamics. Ryan and Arta discuss the importance of adhering to one’s designated role in HR, emphasizing the necessity of confidentiality and the perils of overstepping boundaries.
- Real-World HR Advice from Online Communities: Engage with thought-provoking HR advice sourced from online discussions. The hosts analyze and add their expert insights to these community-driven tips, providing listeners with practical, actionable HR solutions.
- Understanding the Psychology Behind Lawsuits: Delve into the emotional drivers that lead employees to pursue legal action against employers. This segment offers a deeper understanding of the legal system's limitations in resolving emotional disputes.
- The Art of Acknowledging Mistakes: Embrace the importance of acknowledging and learning from errors in the legal and HR spheres. The hosts advocate for transparency and honesty in the face of mistakes, underscoring how these qualities foster trust and integrity within an organization.
Targeted at HR and legal professionals, as well as business leaders seeking to enhance their knowledge, this podcast episode is a treasure trove of expertise. Whether you’re fine-tuning your HR strategies or navigating the legal landscape of your organization, "HR and Legal Strategies: Unveiling the Insider Playbook" is your guide to mastering the art of managing people and legalities in the corporate world. Tune in for an enriching experience that combines professional wisdom with real-life applications.
Good morning everybody. Or afternoon or evening, this is the employee handbook podcast. We're sticking with that one right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think employee handbook work it's good. Yes, yeah, it's definitely good. There was too many TPS reports. I don't think people still understand what we were like. Bob one and Bob two is definitely a reference to office space, which, if you have not seen that movie and you're listening to this podcast, well, I would. I don't want to tell people to stop listening to the podcast right now and go walk. You can do both at the same time. Just keep this podcast on loop for hours and hours and hours, like you know when you're asleep, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But oh yeah, those views up, but yes, so welcome everybody to the employee handbook podcast with the Bob's. I am Ryan Ellis and much more deep and and Sultry voice are the will to war.
Speaker 2:Hey how you doing. I was still. My voice is super nasally when I hear it. It's kind of it's kind of scary, but my mom told me I should be like a sports announcer or something like that. So I think you probably do a good job with that.
Speaker 1:But the other thing, though, to your first point is no matter what you say, when you listen to your own voice, it just doesn't sound the same. It doesn't sound like as cool as you think it is, and every time I do it I'm like I've actually never listened to any of all, then you're in for a treat, my friend, when you listen to this episode.
Speaker 2:I don't want to hear my voice, All right. Well, this is kind of a momentous watershed moment. It's weird because a lot of times you see people evolve over time and and see how fame and success affects them. And really now we can see this in real time with us and how we develop, because just a few weeks ago we didn't have this podcast and now I mean I don't want to brag, but in the last 30 days we have 52 downloads cumulatively of all our podcasts. So I want to start out, ryan, by asking you basically, now that you're famous, how is your life changing and how do you plan on staying grounded?
Speaker 1:You know, I ask myself this every day for the last two days and it's very difficult, honestly, to walk through a TJ Maxx without being noticed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to try on women's clothes in the aisle.
Speaker 1:Are you somehow poked into their security cameras? How do you know this?
Speaker 2:No, that's from personal experience. When you when you find something in the women's section that's five XL, that just fits perfectly. I don't have time, it's not a better feeling?
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't, I can't make it all the way up to the other side to the and explain to the lady at the changing room, anyway. So we're both dealing with fame in different ways and you know very, very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. It only cost me like I think like $500 in LinkedIn post boosting to get this far. So really, the ROI has been tremendous and I want to thank all of you who are here from LinkedIn friends, enemies, colleagues, you know, stalkers, whatever it is, whoever you are all around the world. So big up to you and without you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't have done it with you. Thank you so much. You were here from the beginning and that means a lot to us, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So let's let's get into it. Ryan, on today's episode I want to talk about the relationship between companies and their outside counsel. To the folks who don't know, ryan has been a defense attorney in employment law in California, nevada, texas, michigan and works very closely with clients who are corporations to advise them on employment law matters, updates all that good stuff has defended them in court, handled litigation for them and wanted to talk about the sometimes complex relationship between outside counsel and corporations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's funny. So one of the things that I learned working for a big firm was that your client is not really the company. Your client is inside general counsel and I am that outside counsel. And without having a good relationship with the inside general counsel and sometimes the legal team, you have a problem with the client because obviously you're being hired by the client, but through general counsel internally.
Speaker 2:Before I go to that, let me get in there real quick. So for people who don't know, I'm thinking to myself, if I'm looking at this from the outside as somebody, hypothetically, who doesn't understand what what general counsel's role is in a company. Why, as the CEO, if I've already hired general counsel, why can't I just tell general counsel hey, we just got sued for discrimination, you handle it. So tell me a little bit more about why that that's not the typical arrangement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually a very good question that we could probably do. I don't know 25 podcasts on, but the main reason is, when you like, enlarge your companies when you have a general counsel. The general counsel's purpose again, generally the general counsel's purpose is to is to help the firm or the company internally to make sure everything is managed, make sure compliance is met, make sure the general corporate filings are met, make sure the corporate meetings are held, make sure if there's any internal contracts that are that are going out to vendors or received from vendors or clients, whatever, those are all reviewed. And okay, not low level stuff, because a lot of this stuff is very intense and in time consuming, but also because it's a lot of it's so much work, it's just so much work.
Speaker 1:But then, you come out, general counsel needs to hire outside counsel, or sometimes they'll hire internal litigation counsel. That happens, like with governments, for example. They'll hire litigation counsel specifically for certain areas of law, like enforcement actions, whatever, and again, depending on the county and the municipality it varies. But so for outside counsel, like me, in these situations, I'm I'm a litigator or was a litigator mostly. Well, I guess I still am. I'm still a litigator. We talk about HR stuff, but you know my history is litigation. So in doing litigation it's a specialized field. Specialized field not because it's difficult to do like any attorney can do it. That's what we're licensed to do is to represent people in court or otherwise. But doing this for so long you learn so much like you have to know simple procedure. You have to know courtroom procedure. You have to know how to handle yourself in a courtroom. You have to know how to present to a jury and jury trials. You have to know how to argue. You have to know how to prepare motions.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things procedurally that you do for your client as a litigation attorney or whether playing it for defense. That you would never know existed if you were just internal counsel dealing with contracts. You know, due diligence charges and acquisitions, minor demands outside. So that's the main reason is it's a different skill set and again, not overall, not a difficult skill set, but it's just a different skill set. It's very hard for me, or was very hard for me, to do a lot of internal corporate stuff when I was, when I first started going to that a while ago. But I mean, I've been doing it again for so long but now I have a dual skill set. So that's the main reason.
Speaker 1:And internal counsel can't deal with all the things like internal general counsel cannot deal with all of the things that are required of a litigation counsel and do their normal. You know nine to five requirement required, job of contract review and stuff, especially in times of trial. Trial could be months long. You can't just have your general counsel, who's essentially handling all of your legal stuff, just gone for a month or two. I mean that doesn't work that way. So that's the main reason. And again, without pontificating any further on this one, it's a very inundated task for general counsel. They have responsibility wise in the company and then outside out of counsel or just kind of overflow counsel if they do corporate work. That's, that's the one of the main reasons.
Speaker 2:And from from outside, from as a plaintiff's attorney, we think of general counsel for a company as someone who also is there to find outside attorneys and negotiate their rates and find the best rate for the company. Is that something that is typically you find general counsel does, or is that like a kind of CEO, cfo job?
Speaker 1:It just depends. Local counsel in my experience is, for my example, is this one person who is head of either director of legal operations or chief legal officer or just general counsel for a certain division or sector of the business. That person will, when coming into a company, like being hired today. For example, coca Cola or name large company here hires me as general counsel. Today I'm going to come into a situation where practices and policies have been put into place by the previous general counsel.
Speaker 1:Usually the new general counsel will bring in outside counsel that they trust and have worked with for a long time and then there's a change of guard, kind of like when the president changes, you know, the his cabinet all. Until, as of now, no females have been elected president. But when they are, you know it'll change to her. But when the president comes in, his or her cabinet changes along with it. Sort of similar to the general counsel situation. But yeah, it's that the general counsel is the gatekeeper. I don't remember what company it was, but at my old firm we would spend a lot of money winding and dining general counsel for large companies just to get on their radar If, like, they had overflow or they needed something in our jurisdiction that they can't handle or whatever. But general counsel is a gatekeeper. The CEO or C suite employees, directors, officers usually trust pretty highly in the general counsel's opinion. But yeah, the C, the excuse me, the general counsel is the gatekeeper and that's the person you need to. You need to win over.
Speaker 2:So how typical is it for a company to have general counsel in terms of size? What is like the? When a company gets to a certain what size do they need to start looking for general counsel, like in your opinion? I know there's not a hard and fast rule about this, but was there like a best practices recommendation that you have for that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, good question. It's funny I've never been asked a specific question before, but I think I think a good gauge on on whether or not you need an internal general counsel is looking at how much time you as like a C suite employee or you as a company, is spending on legal. If you're paying your outside counsel over the average salary in your jurisdiction for what a general counsel would be paid, that's probably a good time to look at hiring general counsel. For example, you might hire me, arda, to to make sure your corporate formation is correct, to make sure you're you know you follow all your corporate guidelines and requirements in your state and to review contracts. If you have a sales business, that that might be the contract. Part of it might be hours and hours and hours a month, which at my rate would cost you way more than hiring internal counsel.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good gauge of looking at it. But usually I see general counsel in smaller companies. But I think the smallest company I've seen that had general counsel was 100 employees Again, not very small. It's a lot of a lot of risk and management. But yeah, just I would go, I would. I would gauge it off of expense on legal.
Speaker 2:That's a good way of putting it because you're right, different companies have different legal exposure depending on the industry that they're in. Do they have a lot of wage an hour workers Do they have? Is it mostly kind of executives or engineers, things like that? I think all those things in terms of how much exposure you have to wage an hour, suits or discrimination and things like that goes into deciding whether or not you need general counsel set up important policies for you. And again, we keep promising we're going to talk about the handbook one day in depth and we will. But does general counsel have any role in, say, reviewing the handbook or creating a handbook? How do you know? Is that something you've done?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done that countless times on all of the fingers and toes that we both have for companies, large and small reviewing handbooks, reviewing policies, reviewing procedures, giving legal opinions as to, hey, we have this complaint, here's our policy and procedure. What do we do? All of that? It's funny because usually the process involves HR preparing. Let's assume this company we're talking about has internal HR.
Speaker 1:The HR department, individuals will prepare a handbook or review the handbook, revise the handbook pursuant to new laws, whatever, all of that. The director of the HR department will usually also review and approve and then take that to the C-suite. C-suite either reviews it and sends it to legal, or the C-suite says, look, we're not reviewing this till legal season. Then at a certain point in time, legal reviews, it gives it the blessing and then the C-suite gives the final okay, which usually has HR done this, has director of HR done this, has legal approved it, okay, good. But that is usually the way it goes and whether internal or external counsel is involved companies that don't have GCs would be skipped to go right to outside counsel. But if there's internal counsel, usually that person would be fit right in between the C-suite making the decision and outside counsel making the decision. Then again, outside counsel is involved with internal GC as to handbooks and policies and procedures would depend on the company's trust in that internal counsel's ability to understand the changes in law.
Speaker 2:But again, unless there's not an extremely large internal counsel or general counsel department.
Speaker 1:It's probably best to always have an external counsel who has their finger on the pulse of employment law to touch those things and make sure that outside counsel gives a blessing, because internal counsel usually doesn't have exposure to that high level of changing laws and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just want to point out as well if you're not currently or have not been in litigation and dealing with litigation directly yourself as an attorney, sometimes it's hard to gauge how much exposure you have in terms of dollars just depending on the legal environment. What cases are hot, what issues are hot, what are courts really keying in on and trying to punish companies for or not considering important? So as an attorney let's say you're general counsel and you get sued by somebody for a certain thing you might think you have a huge exposure there when in reality, outside counsel can come in and say, no, listen. In the past two years these types of cases have not been getting huge verdicts, so it's not a lot to worry about, and that will really change the way that you try to negotiate with plaintiffs counsel, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed. Well, I've said a lot about internal counsel, external counsel and how you find them. From your perspective, how do you find a good lawyer, or how would you advise, like if a friend came to you hey, lawyer, hey, I have this issue.
Speaker 1:I need you to help me with and this is something you don't handle Like, let's say, it's a maritime law situation where you're dealing with a ship that's sunk in treasure and we don't know if you have experience in that, but let's assume you don't. How would you advise that person like a friend of yours, someone you would you want to give good advice to? How would you advise him to how to find a good lawyer?
Speaker 2:Well, I think references are always the best way. You just find a lawyer that you know, or find your friend who's been sued the most and just try to get references from them.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you don't have a lot of friends that have been sued a lot and there's a comparison of how many lawsuits they've been dealing with. But sorry, I just want to make sure that all of our listeners understand that although we're in California, we don't live and die by lawsuits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I guess it depends what you're getting sued for. That could be a whole other episode, yeah. But yeah, I think the best thing to do is ask attorneys that you know or you've dealt with. I think most people who are in a position where they're running a business would know somebody who's an attorney or have dealt with attorneys in the past. I think that's really the best place to start, and if you just don't know anybody, you can always contact your local bar association. I'm not sure what.
Speaker 1:Have you ever? I'm sorry I have to interrupt you have you ever contacted local bar association?
Speaker 2:To find out.
Speaker 1:No, in general. Have you ever contacted them?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think I have.
Speaker 1:This is a time to pontificate, or this is a time to discuss a story that I have with that. When I first became a lawyer about two years in and I had experience I walked into a bar association like physically walked in back before they.
Speaker 1:You know the world relied on internet and zoom and you know hiding behind computers. I walked in and I asked the receptionist hi, my name is Blank, I want to help. How do I help you? I will do it for free, you know, because they do this referral service and all that crap. And I got shut down like immediately. They said we're not going to meet with you, we can't not going to talk to you. And then finally I figured out that they have an application process and you have to have all these insurance requirements and blah, blah, blah and all the stuff we have. But people, bar associations and legal service providers that offer like pro bono services to the indigent make it so difficult for people to help other people.
Speaker 2:It was sad, so I just want to add that.
Speaker 1:So if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're a bar association, make your process easier for us attorneys to help people that are indigent or less fortunate, please.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great point because we get tons of calls at my office for issues that are not lucrative for an attorney to help with or are usually just kind of the area like social security law or a lot of custody stuff happens and family law, where people cannot afford a lawyer, but it's not something that's necessarily lucrative for an attorney and or lucrative for an attorney or they can't afford it, and a lot of these legal associations are you're right, these local associations very difficult to see anybody and get help with those. So that's something when they talk about lawyers being for rich people, or that's really what they're talking about. There is a shortage of legal aid that's available for people who can't pay kind of $500 an hour. That really needs to be addressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's sad, it really is, but what can you do except hope people come to you when they need it and you can actually help them? But anyway, sorry, I'll step off my soapbox for a moment. But you were saying how to find a good lawyer referrals and then we then I interrupted. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Well, so yeah, I mean I think referral. Referrals are the best way. I mean, if you really want to get deep into it, I think you can read the legal journals, in whatever area, and maybe find somebody who's written an article or something like that Just as a start and it's for employment law. There's a few big firms that you can go to if you want to go that route. If you have a big enough company, that's probably what you're going to do, but otherwise, I would say referrals are definitely the best way to find a good attorney, to be outside counsel for your company, and I agree.
Speaker 2:So what I want to ask you is when you first get hired by a company, what are the things that you notice right away about the company that set the tone for how you think things are going to go while you're defending them or helping them with a certain issue?
Speaker 1:I think the biggest indicator of how the relationship is going to go is how the client responds to my engagement letter. That's usually the first I say I'm too much, I'm going to get on this again. That's the first indication I'm going to get of how the relationship going forward in the case is going to happen, is going to go. And that's because I've met with a lot of people, a lot of clients, a lot of C-suite people, a lot of general counsel in their office, in my office, at a Starbucks or wherever they want to meet for lunch, and everybody's happy. Everybody's like oh yeah, we got the budget for this. This is all BS.
Speaker 1:Every company says their claims against them are BS, which is fine. My job to make that happen is BS. This is what happened. We got all the documents, we got all the facts, we got 25 witnesses, we got surveillance footage, we got an admission, we got a settlement. It's all the crap. You hear all the crap in their initial meetings and then you ask for some documents and information and they send you whatever piecemeal what they have.
Speaker 1:But then at a certain point when I review the file and I say, okay, I can help you Absolutely. Here's my plan. Let's get you engagement letter, get started. Yeah, cool, sounds great, we appreciate it. We appreciate everything you're doing. Let's get on this ASAP, cool. And it's again.
Speaker 1:It's usually at a point where a deadline is occurring in litigation that they haven't they're going to miss, or like the need to response, or they have an EEOC, or in California, labor Ward Commission hearing something. It's always an urgent matter. And then you send their engagement letter. Or I send the engagement letter and it says you know, it's six or seven pages long and talks about how the relationship will work, communication, the scope of engagement, scope of engagement, all that stuff. And then it comes to the payment part. Here's my early rate, here's what I need up front. And then I want to say 95% of the time but I think recently it's been better but like a very high volume percentage of those emails get back with call me to discuss. I'm like I know what this is about. Fine, we call, I call, we have a meeting, hey, so I didn't think it was going to be that expensive. We got all these documents, like their tone changes and I just know. From that on out it's like well, hey, I need you to do X, y, z and you should do this and you do that, but they don't want to pay and that's the problem. That's the biggest indication for me that it's going to be a tough relationship.
Speaker 1:The other time, too, is when you give advice, like, let's say, you consult with somebody, give some free, legal, non-binding advice, and again asterisk. This show is not legal advice. We are it's for entertainment purposes only. We are not your attorneys. We'd love to be, but we are not. So take everything we say with a green assault, all of you viewers out there, every single one of you. But so I would give them some advice, like, hey, I've reviewed your file you have, you're missing this, you're missing that. You're not complying with this law. You're not complying with that law. Like in any chart perspective, you don't have a written employment. The employee never accepted your policies and procedures. Have them sign their documents, some small, innocuous stuff. They don't follow it. They get sued and then they come to you asking what happened, so that to kind of wrap that up in a bow. My the indication I get from the client not listening to the most basic of pieces of advice is an indication of how going working with them in that case is going to go.
Speaker 2:So does that happen less when there's general counsel present, or is that something that doesn't really affect this particular issue?
Speaker 1:Well, it depends. I have a client where I don't know. A long time ago I dealt with an issue that was heavily litigated and an appealed and then litigated Big process. And we have an issue in the HR department regarding files. Significant amount of money was spent on third parties to bring the recommendations we made to compliance with the law. It was California, so in California law, and the money was spent. Again, when I say significant, I might be like multiple year salaries of money was spent to third parties. Getting something done was never done and then, despite all of that effort, the lawsuit came in the mail like our came, was served on the client. We got sued for the same things that they were supposed to fix.
Speaker 1:That company had general counsel and that general counsel was very, very good at their job I still talk to that person today Very good. But sometimes general counsel can't control people in other departments. That was not that person's fault, general counsel's person's fault at all, but they were exposed to like, hey, ryan, let's talk about this, even though this should have been resolved. So it just depends on the people that are working with or under or supposed to be working with or under that general counsel. But if it's a general counsel issue like, let's say it's a contract issue, that you give the advice before or not, and then general counsel comes to you later with the same lawsuit.
Speaker 1:That rarely happens, cause again, most people hired for companies to do a job do the job in the general counsel department and we'll go into detail in other departments, I'm sure soon. But I mean on the company side it's kind of easy to see for me easy to glean a couple of things quickly from the company perspective. What makes a client know how I'm going to be able to tell what that client's going to be or how they're going to be. What about from your side? What do you look for in a client when they come in your office asking you to help?
Speaker 2:Man. That's a very complicated question, because I think when I'm looking at a client and deciding whether I want to represent them, you want to look for somebody who is responsible, who has documented everything, who has exhausted the process at work before coming to you. But when I see someone who maybe comes to me and tells me that, oh, they're guilty of harassment across the work environment, fiha violations, and they're telling me very specific things, that kind of makes me a little bit worried, because then you have a Google attorney that you're dealing with and it tends to make my job very difficult because as the attorney, you're being hired for your expertise and so it becomes very difficult when you have a client constantly challenging you.
Speaker 2:When they're paying you well, I mean on contingency, when you're eventually gonna get paid. I think it also applies to defense too. When you have a client who's paying you for advice and then is constantly disagreeing with you or challenging you on that, that becomes very difficult. So that makes a bad client and not to say you should not be asking questions from your attorney to try to understand. But this is kind of I'm talking about a little bit more of an adversarial.
Speaker 2:Constantly being challenged and looked at suspiciously by your client is a very bad sign. Another bad sign for me as a plaintiff's attorney and I don't mean this to be cynical, but if somebody says I'm here because on principle, I just it's the principle oh yeah, oh my, as a plaintiff's attorney, that is the worst thing that you ever wanna hear. That's like if you're a woman and you meet a guy who says oh, I'm a nice guy, I'm a nice. Oh, my God, get away from me, get away from me, and the problem is that the only thing I can get you as an attorney, as a plaintiff's attorney, is money. I cannot get your feelings validated.
Speaker 1:I cannot Can't get principal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I mean I can't make you emotionally a whole and, more importantly, I can't take one third of your emotional validation and put it in my bank account. So what are we gonna do here? And people who get hung up on principle are the ones who are less likely to wanna take a reasonable offer from their employer, because what I hear a lot is oh, they're winning. They think they've beaten me. Nobody's beaten anybody. At this point. You're signing a release and you're signing a settlement agreement.
Speaker 2:The other side is not happy, so there's no way to control how they're gonna feel when you're the plaintiff. That they're gonna be mad, or they're gonna remember you, or the CEO is gonna be like up at night, or you're manager, they don't care. The only thing that matters to them is what's the number that the plaintiff is asking for. And so a lot of times if I hear somebody who's like I don't care about the money, I don't care about the money. I don't wanna represent a person like that, because they're the most difficult type of client to try to get them to settle for a reasonable offer, because they tend to really overvalue what their claim is, just based on their feelings and up till the case gets to the jury.
Speaker 2:You're not getting a lot of value for emotional distress Everybody. What about my emotional distress? What about my emotional distress? Well, what about your emotional distress? It's not something that's easy to quantify and put a dollar amount on, and it's really why things like this go to the jury. So those, for me, are the most difficult kind of clients to deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point, Principal. That happens on my side too and that and I would I tell clients cause you know, usually that comes in the first consultation or call. You know, I really just wanna make a point here and I'm like I love making points because that costs a lot of money and it's gonna cost you a lot of money and I make a lot of money off of that and I'm completely upfront with them. I said, look, if you wanna make a point, just understand that the quote I'm gonna give you is probably gonna be double, cause it's unnecessary in litigation A lot of the time. Sometimes it's necessary to need to do these things and how the plaintiff's counsel litigates, but a lot of the time it's unnecessary and just expensive. And again, clients who will pay that and it is what it is. It's their decision. But all I can do is be honest with people. Principal is unattainable, unless you know they put a. I'm not gonna criticize my own clients. It's usually unattainable and it's expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's just such a kind of ephemeral concept. There's really no way. What's the exchange rate for emotional validation to dollars, I mean?
Speaker 2:there's no way that you can define that what. Well, how much is it gonna take for my ex-employer to be pissed off? How much would I have to get? Oh, he's only paying me 20 grand. He's probably laughing to the best. Well, that's not really how it is and you're never gonna know anyway. You know. All you should concentrate on is is this enough money for me to have a little bit of closure in this situation? And I think the same thing applies for defense, like, even if you think you've done nothing wrong, even if you know you're trying to make a principled stand, is a principled stand worth paying an extra $50,000 in legal fees and potentially having to pay more in a settlement because it's taking longer or losing that trial? Usually the answer is no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agree, and so this is another thing that you brought up. I wanna make a point. I wanna make a point which is a big thing that clients will say. A lot of clients will complain about lack of communication with a lawyer. You know, if you look on Yelp reviews and stuff for attorneys, that always. Oh, I never talked to the attorney, I never got updates, and so what is a normal relationship between outside counsel and a company in terms of getting updates on ongoing litigation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one's easy. It just depends on the client. I like to send updates every time something happens or on a monthly basis. I've had clients with multiple, multiple litigation litigations that's not a word Multiple lawsuits going at the same time, where I'd send an update every week as the status of all cases. That helps them obviously manage internally what's going on, but also it doesn't shock them when they get a bill from the office if they have 100 cases going on at once, for example, versus a different client who may have one, and they'll get an update every couple of weeks because something happens, or every month. How many times, on this note, you do the other side? How many times do your clients call you and just complain about why they don't have money?
Speaker 2:Oh, all the time. I mean, one of the big things I have to explain to clients is that the legal process is not like an interventionist process. It's not something that happens ideally in the middle of a shit storm. The storm dies down, you survey all the damage, you find out exactly what's owed and then you go after it. Judges hate to be involved in matters when the dust hasn't settled. They want the dust to settle and then basically go after it.
Speaker 2:And so that becomes very difficult with clients who think that the process is going to go very quickly and they don't understand that one of the techniques that the defense uses and just the necessary process of a lawsuit for it to be a valid process, for it to be trustworthy process, it has to take time and it has to go through all of the motions no pun intended for it to be able to be considered valid, because if something just gets rushed through the court and people are going to lose trust in the process, not that things should take a long time, but they need to take a certain amount of time, and that's one of the biggest problems I have with clients is that they think things should go quickly or they think, well, why don't I just go explain it to the judge and the judge will understand?
Speaker 2:That's another thing that can never happen in real court. There's no type of opportunity like in Judge Judy or something like that, where you go personally, argue with the judge and make your case as a plaintiff. So that's something that we deal with a lot and it is very difficult because, again, clients overvalue their case.
Speaker 1:Every single time and that goes both ways. Like employers, I mean multiple occasions where we get a full defense verdict against a plaintiff who files a claim, but it's always more expensive than they anticipate. So I'm assuming that's what you mean. A plaintiff thinks they were harassing work. You represent a person, your experience. It might be worth $100,000, but they think it's worth $55,000.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is actually a number I've heard. I'm going to have to call it a smell. With that. I think it's a good place for us to end this segment. We're going to be right back, talk a little bit more about the relationship between attorneys and clients. Talk a little bit about why plaintiffs sue. To give HR a little bit of an understanding and business owners a little bit of understanding of what are the things that make it more likely that an employer or former employee is going to want to sue the company if they've been let go. So stay tuned, don't touch that dial. We'll be right back and we're back. Thank you for sticking with us.
Speaker 2:This is the Employee Handbook podcast with Arda and Ryan, or Ryan and Arda, depending on what flavor you like of the order. We want to quickly just talk a little bit about in this segment why plaintiffs sue their former employers. I think that's very important for companies to understand because it could help them administrate a little bit better and make the probability of somebody who's terminated suing the company for wrongful termination go down. So I think one thing I want to talk about is the feeling of emotional validation that a lot of plaintiffs come to their potential attorney when they've been fired. I think a lot of times we touched on it in the previous segment they say they want to do things on principle.
Speaker 2:I think that is a horrible thing to hear as a plaintiff's attorney because, again, all we can get you is money. I can't get you anything else but money. I can't get you an apology, I can't get you a letter, I can't get you a picture of your boss crying when he's signing. Those are all things that I can't get you. All I can get you is money.
Speaker 2:But one thing I do see is a lot of clients come in and say I want them to feel what I feel. It's a term in psychology, but what is it called? It's called projective identification. So you feel a certain way and so you're going to behave in a way that is going to elicit similar feelings from the person who's causing you to feel this way. So in this example it would be I'm the plaintiff, I've just been fired and I'm feeling lost. I'm feeling hurt, I'm feeling betrayed, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling all these negative emotions, and now I want the person who fired me and the company to feel the same way, and the way I'm going to accomplish that is suing.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, I'm sorry, I'm going to steal this from you. So, I'm talking for too long.
Speaker 2:Go go.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's fine. So one of the things that an employer can do to minimize exposure to potential litigation again, I'm saying potential If somebody sues you, a lot of the things we're going to talk about in this segment aren't going to apply. But if somebody sues you, or excuse me before somebody sues you, to prevent that, just be a human being, like, be empathetic. Talk to the person. Treat them as just like you, a human, not a piece of garbage that you want to get rid of because they did something that you don't like or violated the policy. Like, even if they did something bad, violated the policy in a bad way, still treat the person as a human, whether it was a mistake or not, whether or not you like it or you agree with it, at the end of the day we're humans and that person is going to live on and they're going to move on and go somewhere else and do and work somewhere else or whatever. But so treat them with respect, treat them with empathy, because a lot of times a simple conversation between HR and the person, the person who was offended by the offender, whatever CEO, even an email for the CEO talk they ask you for a call Could be even enough If the person never takes the opportunity to make that phone call, but being empathetic and having a discussion like an honest, not recorded discussion about like hey, look, let's talk. I know this is what happened, I know what's going on, let's work our way through this to resolve.
Speaker 1:And again, if the person has been fired and they're pissed off about it, maybe that's a severance agreement, maybe that's agreeing to provide a positive recommendation for them, maybe it's giving them suggestions for another place to go work if you can't resolve that issue. But really the main one is, just before lawsuit, being empathetic. Not sending nasty emails and text messages and memes, pictures or whatever. Not going out and defaming the person on Instagram or Reddit or Facebook or whatever the heck the kids do these days on social media. It's just being a human and it's funny to say it that way. It feels like such a rudimentary duh thing to do, but nobody does it Like nobody. Are there times in your practice where someone's like if they just would have said they were sorry, we wouldn't be here?
Speaker 2:Oh, 1,000%. I mean, I think that's a very familiar refrain that I see, and I think we've talked in previous episodes about having a defined role for HR and management. Each you know respectively, and one of the important things that you do to show that you're a human is that managers are involved in the firing process to explain, and you don't always have to explain. Most states, I think, except for South Dakota, are all at will and you don't really owe legally an explanation to the person you're firing. If you just don't like them, they're not doing well, you say hey, listen, we don't have a job for you anymore, you're fired, goodbye, and that's really all you legally owe them.
Speaker 2:But again, if they're getting fired by, say, an HR person they've never met or somebody that is dispassionate and doesn't want to give them a chance to talk or ask questions, follow-ups and stuff like that, and it becomes very difficult for the person getting fired.
Speaker 2:They just feel like they're trapped and there's nothing they can do, which is what the case is.
Speaker 2:But I think that can be very harmful and really make it more likely for them to want to sue. Then whether you take a little time and I'm not saying that a company should sit there and just kind of humor somebody and let them rant and rave and say, oh, this is unfair and all that kind of stuff and get into a debate on whether or not they should have been let go or not. But yeah, at the same time there has to be a little bit of humanity in the termination process and, just as a business decision, to be a little bit cynical about it. Because again, so many people come into my office and just want to get this sense of revenge and really make them feel what I feel and that's just, that's not possible. But again, if you can, as a company, try to do whatever you can do to minimize those resentful feelings and people that have been terminated, then you're going to be in a much better position going forward about not having to worry that they're going to come back and file suit against you.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, and that's it's funny because you can't extract a pound of flesh with the court system, like if someone's hurt they want to hurt back, whatever. When you were talking it reminded me of the movie Saw, when the person in the song we just wanted to get retribution or revenge for whatever these people did in their lives and making them physically hurt themselves. But that doesn't happen in law. I mean, the best you can get in law would be an injunction for someone to stop talking about something, to stop them from doing something, to make them do something, something like that, and obviously money in this realm. But to me you can't reverse time. Judges can't do that. Judges can't give you emotional support. Judges can't give you good feelings. Well, they might make you feel good but they can't award in a judgment that you get X amount of happy days Doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:None of that stuff happens. I think that's a big misconception of the court system is that judges clearly are limited to what they can do by law. But also judges can't make people pay money. I have a lot of clients I've had a lot of clients over the past 15 years, excuse me that have won significant awards or obtained orders or judgments for money, but the defendant can't pay it. So again, the courts are very limited, so the legal process will be limited too. For employees and for employers it goes both ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one thing, and also choosing clients. We talked a little bit about what an ideal client for a plaintiff's attorney is. Smaller family markets and local businesses and things like that a lot of times don't have insurance and there's no money to pay. They're almost judgment proof that, even though employees think that these businesses are flushed with cash, that many times is not really what the case is, and it becomes very difficult to explain to somebody that hey, listen, I can't take your case because there's a very good chance that they won't pay, and so that's another thing that becomes a difficulty for and very frustrating for people when they feel like they've been taken advantage of by the work that their employer is practically judgment proof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that kind of goes the old adage of well, it's a big company, I'll sue them, or it's a company, I'll sue them. Like I know, they have a lot of money and they don't have anything. So no, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 2:So another thing that I want to talk about is good advice that we can give to HR managers and directors that we found on a Reddit post here. There's a Reddit post of what's the most important piece of advice, and we just want to talk a little bit about some of the things that we saw in this post and things that we agree and disagree with, and I think it's very important as attorneys also to read these posts and understand, kind of boots on the ground. What's going on, what are HR directors and HR personnel dealing with that makes their job difficult? What are things that are popping up with employees, you know, work from home issues or talking about employee compensation and things like that that are currently in the human resources zeitgeist. So the first one, which I found very interesting, that's really appropriate for us to talk about, would be I'm sorry, I can't get over that.
Speaker 1:It's a good you story Just sitting here shaking my head I know you guys can't see them in the audience, but I'm sitting here like these words are great and I have no idea what they mean, sorry, continue.
Speaker 2:That is a real University of Arizona education. Just shining through this podcast and showing you what we learned over in Tucson. The big words that we learned in Tucson just jungle juice and frappe parties. There was big words being learned at University of Arizona around the turn of it's perfect use of the word.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm just, I'm just an awe of your, of your vocabulary.
Speaker 2:Here we are. You know, this is, this is what we're trying to bring people. We're trying to enlighten them and give them big words that they can take.
Speaker 1:A shoe is another one that I like to use as to, as I would say it yes, yes, exactly yes, yes but now it's not that long.
Speaker 2:But you know it's powerful that one People, a lot of people don't know what it is Ref-changing the podcast. What's that? This and fropping that's another good one. I'm just going to name big words.
Speaker 1:OK, you're for an hour talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just name big words. So the first piece of advice that somebody posted, which is the top comment, is there is the law, the policy and the right thing to do. This is, this is like a Aristotelian level. Oh, there we go. Yeah, aristotelian level comment that somebody has made here, estimate, agitated to, to, for was the person who came up with that, and I think that that's a very good one. There is law, the policy and the right thing to do. Let's talk about that from a company's perspective and I think you know, settling is a very good example of this. This little kind of what is this Platitude, I guess?
Speaker 1:Tips and tricks. Platitude yeah, best practice. You said settlement agreement right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well. I think, settlement agreements when it's better to settle rather than pay for costly litigation. I think another example, is the security guard versus engineer being late every day example, and I think this is a very good one for this, because it shows the policy might be that anybody in the company will get punished for being late or reprimanded and possibly fired, but but how does that apply to different types of employees in a company?
Speaker 1:Yep, so the right thing to do. Obviously, we just again treat them as a human. Everybody's late. Everybody has problems. If the security is late.
Speaker 1:Clearly there's more of an issue for the company's physical property, sometimes the physical turning into electronic or digital. But the engineer being late, deadline aside, might not be that big of a deal. Obviously there's different job responsibilities, but you can't this is the hard part of HR and the hard part of our job is is making decisions that companies make about these specific instances be okay or not? I don't know what the right thing to do would be to treat them the same right or to provide empathy, like we were saying earlier, and just general good human treatment, depending on the circumstance.
Speaker 1:If the security guard's late and I'm not going off tangent here if the security guards late because they were drunk last night at a Super Bowl party, versus hey, I had, I was running late because of traffic, my son was sick, my daughter was sick Insert random excuse here. That happens to people all the time Something to take into account, but again, I don't know. That's that question. The question you asked about the security guard was engineer is kind of similar to what I heard the police asking their application, which is hey, you pulled somebody over speeding. It was your parents. What do you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's a very good point and I think it just goes in to the importance of explaining things to employees. If you're going to dock them for being later or whatever, and they bring up something about the engineer or whoever it is coming in late every day, at that point you have to break it down them and explain that, well, your job is to be here, open the door and watch for people coming out and provide security versus somebody who's doing kind of white collar work. There is not such an emphasis on them being late or on time for the performance of or their performance in the company. And, again, explaining things goes a long way to avoiding problems with employees, and I'm just saying that based on people coming in and complaining about their former employers.
Speaker 2:So the second comment that is the most upvoted here is you're going to mess up, it's okay and there's nothing we can't fix, but don't aim for perfection or you'll drive yourself crazy. So I think this is not the point that I necessarily want to make is avoiding perfection, but understanding that you're going to screw up and don't try to do things that are going to cover it up, because that's when you're really going to get in trouble, because lying and covering things up it's usually going to get discovered, because most people are not equipped to come up with a big lie and then create all the necessary foundations to keep the lie up. And you're going to get caught if you're in a deposition, if there's a mediation or an investigation eventually. And so, yeah, you're going to mess up, own it and just try to take care of it with the responsible parties and that's going to make it, so you're going to reduce really the exposure and liability long term, rather than lying about it and maybe really having it blow up into something big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to add on this, this has been a tough life lesson for me to learn personally, just in like personal life, like doing laundry or taking out a trash If you don't do it and you delay it for the next day or whatever, it's still going to be there, you still have to do it. Except it's worse every time and that's why I try to live by a principle of it'll take you less than a few minutes to do, just do it now. But oh my gosh, it is so hard to do. And the same goes and kind of translates directly to work or HR specifically.
Speaker 1:A lot of things in the human resources realm and the legal realm are just not fun. We put it bluntly, they suck. But if we don't do it it just gets worse. If fester's, it becomes a bigger problem to deal with, becomes a more inundated problem to deal with, it becomes more expensive. Whatever it is, you got to do it. So one of those things just got to do it. I don't even know where I was going with this, but I like, I like the conversation, part of it Just got to do it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I don't know. Listen, what other, better advice is there than you just got to do it? But it's true, I think what you're, what you're trying to say, in a sense, is every job is going to, is going to suck to some, to some degree, and there's suck is also one of those big you of a Arizona words that we learned. But it's like guys, but you, you as an employee, have to decide what you're going to take in terms of working in an environment that makes you stressed out. Every single job is going to have a certain amount of stressors that is naturally associated with it. If you're a construction worker, you have the stress of maybe being physically injured by the job and and that creates a certain type of environment. And as a HR person, there's huge stressors that you have to deal with and then you have to decide whether it's something that that you can handle and if that's the right job for you. And and I don't mean that in a in a way like, oh, you can't handle this and mentally, but no, it's normal Some people do not want to have a job that causes them a lot of emotional response, because it's very difficult to terminate somebody.
Speaker 2:Very, very emotionally difficult. You're dealing with their family, their rent, that they have to pay their mortgage, finding a new job, all these things that are going to now be on their plate because they're being terminated. You are personally seeing yourself as responsible for that, and and that's a lot to take on, and so that's one thing where you have to decide. Like this job, I have to be responsible enough to do the right thing in the face of having very emotionally heavy duties Put on. So a lot of people again will cut corners or do things that they're not supposed to do in order to avoid those types of emotional situations, but that's what really gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1:I agree that's a good way to say it Well.
Speaker 2:I mean, you really left me hanging there because I was trying to say something smart and hopefully you would pick up from that.
Speaker 1:But I'm not good at this. Yeah, either.
Speaker 2:I mean, we didn't want everybody to know that we kind of just woke up and we're like all right, we're going to talk about some shit today, so yeah, I want to go over. I want to go over valuable and expensive.
Speaker 1:I want to go over one more of the of the adages, or the piece of advice on that link that you have, and it's that you are not a decision maker. You are there to provide advice and direction. Yes, based on the company policies and procedures. Do not take it personally.
Speaker 2:Well, I not only do not take it personally, but here's a great thing that I think gets well.
Speaker 2:Not a great thing, but a great example of something that gets HR people very frustrated, you know, and also in trouble, I think, people who are attracted to this job.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of different ones.
Speaker 2:There's the people who are very good at their job, who don't take things personally and are very straightforward, organized and just do their job, and those are the best type of people.
Speaker 2:But there's also and not that it's bad to be empathetic, but there's a lot of people who want to get in there and solve problems and be somebody who employees can come talk to and a shoulder to cry on, and that becomes a very, very heavy, difficult job and heavy burden to have to bear after a while. And so one thing that happens with those types of people is that they a lot of times they'll see something happening at the company that's against company policy or against HR policy or against advice they've given to C-suite employees, and they take it very personally when the company does not enact policies a certain way or listen to them. What would you say to somebody who came to you, ryan, and said this company is just they're not doing any of the stuff that I told them to do. I told them this. I told them that they don't listen, so what is your advice to an HR person who's in that position?
Speaker 1:That kind of goes back to what I said originally, which is you are not a decision maker. You are there to direct, based on company policy and procedure. It's really HR's job and then even more outside counsel or counsel's job to provide advice. I mean you're not there to make business level decisions about the company and its operations. You are there to, again, be a moderator to make sure and assist with the enforcement of company policies and procedures and sometimes developing them, and to deal with internal investigations. All the stuff's under the HR umbrella. You are there to do, you're not there to dictate policy. So I would have a nice conversation and try to lay that on them of like look, I understand how you feel.
Speaker 1:It's very hard I mean in my industry, with clients when they win or lose. Taking it personally, it's very hard for me not to. It's very hard to not really invest your personal thoughts, beliefs, emotions into where you work, your clients, the people you work with. But that's what that person needs to do. Again, if you a very large corporation, example, if the person who's talking to me about this says, hey, this very large corporation C-suite is not listening to my advice, what am I going to make them? Do it Like no one's going to make them do it, it's their decision. But again, if you give advice, and it's good advice, and it's not followed, there's a somebody's going to know about it and you, you know, maybe that'll put you in a better place in the future.
Speaker 2:But you've done your job at that point. That's the other thing Knowing when to be satisfied that you've done your job. When you've researched the topic, when you've talked to people, when you've, you know, given your opinion that's been asked for or uncovered something, and then you make it known to the responsible parties, then you've done your job. Your job is not necessarily for seeing the thing being followed out or carried out exactly as you envisioned, but your job is just to provide the best advice regarding your slice of the business to the decision makers and then leave it from there. Don't take it personal. I mean, of course, every it's everybody's has a limit for being ignored or taking things personal or whatever. But I mean just in general. That's our best advice in that sense, because you don't want to be the one making those decisions.
Speaker 2:In most cases, those are the hard decisions that lead to getting sued, that lead to getting fired, that lead to company shakeups. That why do you want to be involved? That's a responsibility that you're not paid for. So why are you going to do stuff that you're not paid for? And I don't mean it in HR. People are not smart enough or not good enough or don't deserve to be listened to. That's not what it is. It's just not your job necessarily. And in companies, especially large companies, people have to understand what their role is so they can do that role to the best of their ability. A company just not being well-organized or not using its personnel efficiently or in the right ways is definitely a different topic. But we're talking about in an ideal world, don't take a personal, just do what the job is that you've been given and don't worry about CEO mistakes and things like that. I mean, if it's really bad, then look for another job. It's your company. You know what I mean. You're playing your role Well imagine.
Speaker 1:A good example too, would be like a scout for a baseball team. The scout spends a lot of time traveling around the country, around the world, trying to figure out what players would be best for the team and how the team operates Nature. A person that's been asked to provide advice on a policy and how to proceed is kind of like a scout. The person does their research. You look at the policy. They try to incorporate personal experience and learning and education to put together a plan for some or options for, let's say, a C-suite.
Speaker 1:To make a decision, just like a scout would provide players that he or she believes would be good for the team. The scout doesn't make the decision of what players come, just like the HR individual does not make the decision of what option is chosen or what path is taken. Once you have presented the options, once the scout has presented the players, your job is done. That's all you can do If the scout proposes a player or if the end is again. Similarly, if the HR professional proposes an idea that's selected and doesn't work out implications whether that's a talking to you, whether that's you know when you won't rely on it next time, whatever but if the vice versa, they provide a player that's not selected, or the HR person provides an option or opinion that's not selected and it turns out to be a game changer, then the company will deal with it in a different way positively, hopefully, next time.
Speaker 2:That was a great example. I'm like shocked at how good that was.
Speaker 1:I'm actually pretty proud of myself.
Speaker 2:But that's good. I like that one a lot. We should make that one of the clips or something. Let's see.
Speaker 2:I'm just looking over one last piece of advice.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't really just honestly be okay with fucking up and don't overextend what your job is and not in a way that again that's like just stay in your place and stay in your lane and really trying to beat people down.
Speaker 2:But the more you get better at your specific job, at HR, and not step out and try to worry about, kind of, the consequences of the advice that you've given, and I think you're going to be in a much better position because you're not going to take on emotionally the consequences of your advice. I should say Again, like you said, hey, I think this guy should be number one, he's the best pitcher I've seen and they take a hitter. Oh okay, oh well, I did what I was paid to do and hopefully it works out for the organization and not turn it into a personal battle between you and the organization or a personal crusade for things that you're an evangelist about. I mean, go tell the boss about things that you're seeing and things that you think are important, but if they don't do something about it, then that's not on you. You've already done your job.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Also, I would just say that one of the number one things that just in general, I'm not even seeing this on there, but as an HR person, you are privy to a lot of things that are going on in the organization, in the office, personal things about people. Keep your mouth shut, oh my God. I think that is the most important thing as an HR person is keep your mouth shut and understand the nature of the stuff that you know about people and keep that to yourself, because that's something that will really piss people off and undermine your position in HR.
Speaker 1:Yep, and not only that, like you said you know, ruin your reputation. It'll put you in a situation where you can't get another job because, despite how big you think the world is, it's not. It just ruins a lot of things. Work gets around, bridges get burned. The last thing you want to be is someone who is known as someone who can't keep a secret or can't keep their mouth shut, or is you know, a water cooler conversation, current? Yeah, exactly all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, your job is just to maintain a department that's kind of neutral and not create an atmosphere where everybody is saying, oh, hr is just for the company and they're against you and all that kind of stuff, because that really poisons the well Anyway. So that's the end of this segment. I think We've done about an hour here. I think Brian's got to go. I got to go as well. We want to thank you for listening. Big tip if you just hit 2X or 1.5 on the playback speed, the hour becomes a lot less daunting and you could fit it into your commute back and forth every day. So, listening, just keep downloading all our episodes. Play them 100 times. Tell all your friends, all your HR buddies, about our podcast. Let's keep downloading. I'm going to keep spending $200 at a time promoting this podcast on LinkedIn. So thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. Try not to stop us in public for autographs and things like that, because it becomes awkward, it starts to draw crowd and it gets dangerous and we don't want to create any liability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no more public nuisance complaints, please.
Speaker 2:We'll probably be on that Cameo app soon where you could pay like $150 for a celebrity to say hello to you. We're going to be running a contest soon or we could do it on Cameo. We'll run a contest for listeners, that if you're a subscriber and you've listened to all our podcasts, we will come to your company and fire the person of your choice.
Speaker 1:I would love that. That'd be fun. That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:That'd be awesome. Or on Cameo you could hire a friend Cameo to fire somebody and then just text it to them and it'll be me and Ryan who nobody recognized.
Speaker 1:Who are these jokers? What is this guy doing here?
Speaker 2:Okay, I just got fired by these two assholes. Why is he in a?
Speaker 1:woman's dress. What is I'm so confused? Well listen if I'm wearing it it's not a woman's dress, that is so.
Speaker 2:what a great example of discrimination here, and I'll say for the record that's okay, and that's not making fun of you.
Speaker 1:That's just. Or this the situation where anybody wears a dress. If they don't, they shouldn't be or shouldn't be whatever. Just tying the TJ Maxx joke together. That's all I was doing.
Speaker 2:No, if I'm wearing it now a man's dress. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. I don't have any more bad jokes to make, so I guess it's a good time to end it. Ryan, do you want to sign off?
Speaker 1:Yep. Thank you everybody. This is Ryan Ellis for myself and Mr Art a little more in the box. We appreciate you, we love you and we'll see you next episode. Peace.
