EP - 32 Dentist Elves, SHRM's Mistakes, Lawsuit Politics, and Clydesdales In the Empty Red Seat

In this episode the guys lay out SHRM's dirty laundry for everybody to see.  They discuss the $11.5M case specifics, the rumored toxic work environment at national SHRM, and how politics play into it all.  It needs to be said.  They mention the HR Besties podcast and critique their takes and the attempts of some to take down SHRM and its local affiliates. 

Learn more about Tony "Two Weeks' Notice" Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about the books referenced on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
This podcast supports Pucks for Autism.  Learn more at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/

The podcast notes that no parakeets were harmed in the recording of this podcast, they volunteered their voices to contribute to the sunny nature of the episode.  

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:10.312)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting and Stephen Bigdeals Smith, who is so important that Santa Claus asks Steve to recruit else for him.

Steve-o (00:35.214)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (00:37.583)
Hi Steve.

Steve-o (00:39.054)
Hi. Did you know I dressed up as Santa one year for our Halloween party?

Tony Benjamin (00:46.938)
did not know that. That's good, though that that works. Look, I've heard the stories that you go ahead, go ahead.

Steve-o (00:49.957)
Well, here's what's really funny about that. Well, I saying, here's the funny part about that. Later, this was, and I can't remember what year this was, maybe it was 2016, 2017, I can't even remember now. But I went around with my girls and we went to different neighborhoods and I was dressed up as Santa Claus. And it's the worst idea I had ever come up with because little kids would start to follow me.

and try to leave their parents to come talk to me. And it became more of a distraction than it did a help. Like I felt so bad for some of these parents because the kids would start crying and I was like, man, I have made today a miserable day for other people. So I vowed never to be Santa Claus for Halloween ever again because yeah, I'm not good there. So anyway, I felt bad. Some of those kids were so sad because they couldn't talk to me.

Tony Benjamin (01:41.05)
By the way,

Tony Benjamin (01:45.498)
Warning to all of those of you listening with kids in the car. No, that's really cool. I was going to say, I know you tried to recruit Elrond to work for Santa Claus, but he wanted to keep working for Gladreal.

Steve-o (01:45.55)
So I guess I looked pretty good.

Steve-o (01:59.404)
Yeah, well, and you know, the one I did recruit ended up becoming a dentist. So that was rough.

Tony Benjamin (02:07.088)
He's pet reindeer. That's right. That's right. Now for Christmas and we're record. By the way, for everybody, we're recording this after Christmas and before New Year. So you're getting delayed holiday cheer and and a little bit of a funniness. We're going to talk about a heavy topic today. So we figure we might as well lead with a little fun. That's right. That's right. So.

Steve-o (02:07.15)
You

There you go, there you go, Tony.

Steve-o (02:18.702)
Correct.

Steve-o (02:28.192)
Yeah, we got to have some cheer, Because this month started out really bad for the HR profession. Let's just put it that way.

Tony Benjamin (02:37.346)
Yes, yes. No, but the reason I was talking about making cracks about Lord of the Rings is because for Christmas, my wife got me a 1000 piece puzzle of the Lord of the Rings map of Middle Earth. And it's it's all in that sepia brown and everything. And look, it's a very first of all, it's a very, very subtle puzzle. And the pieces.

Steve-o (02:53.24)
So fun.

Tony Benjamin (03:05.998)
are interchangeable almost. So like you can fit two pieces together really well that don't go next to each other. right, right. And so not only that, but the border example around it, the outside of is black and it has a line. And the only way you know which side of the puzzle it's on, because if you get out of magnifying glass and you look at the little line, there's a little maroon line before the white thing or after the white line.

Steve-o (03:11.743)
man, that makes it tough.

Tony Benjamin (03:36.034)
And so if you can spot that, you know which side of the puzzle it goes on. But you have to look that closely. And so and then, of course, all the writing of all the little paths and all that sort of stuff and places on the map are like minuscule and holy crap. It's awesome. I'm loving it. amen, brother. Yes, not only that, but I have a magnifying glass out so I can look at the little paper because they give you a small paper. It's not even the size of the puzzle.

Steve-o (03:42.957)
Ahem.

Steve-o (03:53.166)
I'm assuming you're wearing your glasses when you're putting this puzzle together.

Steve-o (04:01.014)
On top of it, that's funny.

Tony Benjamin (04:05.808)
They give you a small paper with a picture on it. And so I'm like, and like, right, right. Like, look, if you're Lord of the Rings fan, you know where Dol Goldor is. That's fine. You know that you know where Merkwood is all that sort of stuff, but you don't remember what was right next to Dol Goldor. That's the problem. So anyways.

Steve-o (04:09.516)
That's all you have to go off of.

Steve-o (04:19.384)
Right.

Steve-o (04:24.974)
But we all know where the shrine is, we know where Mordor is, like we know it all.

Tony Benjamin (04:29.454)
That's yeah, that's right. That they share. Right. OK, there you go. So there you go. Now, Steve, we wanted to get into this because I know you have some plans tomorrow night. It's tomorrow night. Right. You're going to the theater.

Steve-o (04:41.294)
Tomorrow night is the night we are going to the theater. We're going to watch the final episode of Stranger Things.

Tony Benjamin (04:50.189)
There you go.

Steve-o (04:50.314)
In the theater because you know the drifty brothers said that the best place to watch the final episode Which is over two hours is in the movie theater. That's what they kept saying And you know, it's getting a lot of controversy right now because the last episode was was kind of a letdown for a lot of people out there and because of that now some people are disappointed they're like well, what's the finale gonna be like now like what are we actually gonna see? and know good old vecna he just

started with the children and took all the children. You know what amazes me about the 80s? Yeah, Tony, the thing is, is in the 80s, do you realize that all of the children in the 80s were demonic kids? They were all demonic. You look at all the movies from the 80s, all the kids were demonic. was like, and so it definitely holds true to that, right? Because these kids were like cruel and vicious in this last season, like just unbelievably vicious.

Tony Benjamin (05:18.648)
You

stole their souls.

Tony Benjamin (05:32.176)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (05:44.144)
yes, yes.

Steve-o (05:44.974)
to their classmates and all that stuff. mean, talk about bullying. So they captured that really well.

Tony Benjamin (05:50.296)
yeah. The 80s are why we have that term bullying, by the way, that it's because of that. Yeah. Right. So now, OK, so you've been you've been watching Stranger Things and you're getting ready to do that. I have I decided that, look, it's been a year since I've been running my own company.

Steve-o (05:55.884)
That's exactly why we have that term bullying. Dad and children of the corn. So there you go.

Steve-o (06:07.052)
I have.

Tony Benjamin (06:14.506)
And it was six months before that that I was aware that the company I was working for was being bought. And so it was like six months of incredible pressure before it was even publicly announced. And then it was four months after it was publicly announced when I knew and then everybody else knew when I, you you're doing all the turnover stuff and all that. Right. So you've been through that. And I didn't realize it until this year was coming to a close just how

Steve-o (06:21.55)
Hmm.

Tony Benjamin (06:44.336)
burned out, still was from that. And not that people were mean to me or anything like that, just meaning the stress level of it was so high that it was incredible. And so I decided that this holiday season that I would I would really take some time off around Christmas. And so there's been several days here around the holiday that I've done nothing. Matter of fact,

That's the beauty of the puzzle I was just describing, because I can sit and stare at that thing and not worry about anything. But my wife and I have been binge watching a few things. And I got to say, I just got to say if anybody wants to watch pluribus, awesome. That show is incredible. Like, I'm a very cerebral. It's on Apple TV. That's right.

Steve-o (07:12.069)
All right.

Steve-o (07:31.192)
And it's on Apple TV, right? For those who might be wondering where it's at, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:35.804)
And I have heard online and I don't know. Absolutely. This is true. But I think it's true. I read an article that said it is the most popular show that they've ever had on Apple, including Ted Lasso. Yes. Right. Yeah. Ted Lasso is brilliant. But this is this is one of those. This is supposedly even more popular than Ted Lasso. So right. Right. Yeah.

Steve-o (07:47.98)
Really? Because I love Ted Lasso.

Steve-o (08:01.134)
I don't know, that's saying a lot if I'm being honest. Wow.

Tony Benjamin (08:05.016)
So the guy's name is I can't remember his first name. His last name is Gilligan. He's the producer of it. And he also worked on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Yeah, Vince Gilligan. Thank you very much. And he's the he's the producer and head guy over this. And it is really, really good. So if you're thinking, wondering of what to watch or whatever, then then take some time and watch that.

Steve-o (08:16.322)
Vince Gilligan.

Tony Benjamin (08:33.786)
Brilliant movie. If you're not a thinker, like if you don't like thinking shows that are character driven, it may not be for you. It's not as slow as Severance. Like Severance is a beautiful show, but it's a slow burn. It's really slow burn. It's not a slow burn, but it's very cerebral. But man, is it good. Incredible show. So there you go, everybody. And then what was there was something else that was coming out in the Megaplex theaters here in Utah.

where they were doing a film series or whatever. can't remember what it was. Dang. I got an ad for it the other day. Yeah, it's like a...

Steve-o (09:11.566)
The only film that I've been seeing lately is David. The holiday that David from Angel Studios, that's the only one that I can think of that has been hit pretty hard out here.

Tony Benjamin (09:17.346)
yeah.

Yeah. No. Anyways, I don't know. Now that I've said on the podcast, everyone's going to mock me because they're going to know what I'm talking about. I can't remember. Anyways, welcome to the podcast, everybody. And if you haven't figured it out, it's an empty red seat episode. No one's sitting in the hot seat today other than me and Steve. And we wanted to get to some kind of some some big topics. And look, I just I want to make this public right now. Steve and I do empty red seats every once in a because we want to.

Steve-o (09:31.544)
Here we go.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (09:50.604)
And we want to talk about something in particular. We don't do this because we can't get guests or anything like that. As a matter of fact, no. Yeah, yeah. So matter of fact, this episode will probably be three or four weeks before it comes out. We've got at least three more in the can. And we're scheduled for at least two more recordings. And that's even though we took a couple of weeks off around the holiday. So that kind of shows you where it's at.

Steve-o (09:57.474)
Yeah, that's definitely not the reason we're booked out for a while, so.

Steve-o (10:10.318)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (10:18.126)
Yeah, seriously, like we've done pretty good. So thank you to all of the listeners and you know, if you have somebody that you feel like would be solid for the podcast, give us a shout out and tag them on LinkedIn or, you know, comment their name or what have you. Can email us.

Tony Benjamin (10:23.397)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (10:30.64)
the HR life podcast that gmail.com send us a note tells who you want on we would be happy to do it. So, you know, we did talk to President Trump and he begged to come on but we decided not to do that we felt maybe it was a little too controversial.

Steve-o (10:45.09)
Yeah, too controversial there. Yeah. And I tried to get hold of, you know, a few others, but they're in jail right now. So it was.

Tony Benjamin (10:55.534)
Right, right. And we still are reaching out. We're still attempting to get a couple of people on the podcast to do HR related humor. And when that happens, you'll all know. But we're working on that. Just so everybody knows.

Steve-o (10:55.884)
That's all right.

Steve-o (11:09.45)
Ever heard of the water coolers? Maybe we should try to get all of the water coolers. They'd be fun. They could even sing a song for us. Yep, yeah, they the only reason I like them so much is they kind of remind me of weird Al because they create these these songs using famous songs, but then they make fun of the workplace. So, you know, that's kind of my jam. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (11:13.198)
Are those the guys that do the dances in the songs? Is that what they do? Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (11:25.442)
Right, right. Yeah, I've seen a couple of videos every once while somebody sends me one. So anyways,

Steve-o (11:31.918)
They were actually at our HR conference in like 2016 in Utah, like years and years ago. Yeah, it was when they were kind of getting started, I think. So they weren't too big back then, but they were here for those of us that are older and remember those days.

Tony Benjamin (11:35.64)
Really?

Tony Benjamin (11:41.6)
explains it.

Tony Benjamin (11:47.588)
They should thank us for giving them their start. All I know is in the videos I see of them, they're twerking and I'm like, maybe not. I don't know.

Steve-o (11:49.816)
you

Steve-o (11:53.954)
Well, there you go. I think that was why I liked it, but OK.

Tony Benjamin (11:58.244)
Yeah, well, everybody's got their own deal, right. In other words. So, yeah. OK, today we want to get into the shurm issue, the big bad shurm issue. We want to talk about their case. We want to talk about all the stuff that's going on, the commentary around it, even the politics of it. We want to talk about that. So as we get into it today.

Steve-o (12:05.698)
Wow, there we go.

Tony Benjamin (12:38.042)
breaking news.

Steve-o (12:40.012)
Yeah, if you haven't heard the case, Sherm recently lost and the verdict came out for discrimination and retaliation. This is important because it's not just discrimination. A lot of people are talking about the discrimination piece, but when you actually read into this case, I feel like the retaliation was even worse than the discrimination.

Tony Benjamin (13:01.818)
Yeah, hey, wait, wait, strategic. I'm thirsty.

Steve-o (13:05.838)
Should I take my drink too?

Tony Benjamin (13:07.376)
Sorry, I had to get a drink. Yeah, yeah, take a drink too.

Steve-o (13:10.486)
Yeah, so my my palate is a whetted a little bit here, right? Yeah, so so here's the thing. So so what I'm going to do is we kind of start this. I'm going to go through the actual case. Now I got access to the actual filing where they this is when they determined that there was enough evidence that it should go to jury and then shortly thereafter they went ahead and selected jury and went through the actual process. So this is kind of that preliminary.

Tony Benjamin (13:14.212)
Yes. OK, go ahead.

Steve-o (13:39.48)
where they're literally, they've got all the people involved, they have their testimonials, and it's the actual case. And so I have a timeline of events as they occurred. And so I wanna share some of the timeline because I think it's important that we understand what's happening in this case. And to really allow you to hear the details so that you can kind of come to your own conclusion here. But obviously, Tony and I are gonna have some of our own comments and things about this, but it...

If anything, before I even.

Tony Benjamin (14:09.284)
Wait, you mean I get to be opinionated? Wow. Woohoo! Shocking!

Steve-o (14:12.386)
You get to be opinionated. I'm giving you permission. But I want to start with the fact that this was a really dumb move by Scherr. I'm just going to throw it out there. They deserved to have a verdict like this. So the verdict was basically 1.5 million in compensatory damages and 10 million impunitive damages to Rehab Mohammed. Or Rehab, maybe it's Rehab.

Tony Benjamin (14:38.126)
Right, right, so let's talk about that. Compensatory damages, those are things that's to make you financially whole as a result of whatever the other party has done, the losing party, what they have done to you. That's to make you financially whole. Right, right.

Steve-o (14:50.412)
Yep. Because of your being fired or retaliated against. Yeah. To make you financially whole based on what you deserve, right? And punitive. So tell us about punitive.

Tony Benjamin (14:59.426)
Right. And punitive damages, that's the punishment. That's the slap on the hand or the belt or the bat to the head. And that is to punish you for what you have done. So those are the two type of damages.

Steve-o (15:12.622)
Well, and yeah, in 10 million, I'd say this was a Chuck Norris punch to the face. So, I mean, that's really what this was.

Tony Benjamin (15:19.0)
Right, right. Or if you're on the other side of that, it's the Bruce Lee punch, the one inch punch that sends you flying.

Steve-o (15:24.846)
I'm a Norse guy, sorry.

Tony Benjamin (15:28.804)
Okay, I'm a Bruce Lee guy. If you guys ever want to see anything cool, watch him do a one inch punch. It's dude that guy sends people flying with one inch punch. Anyways, it's on it's on YouTube. Catch the video. All right, go ahead, Steve.

Steve-o (15:38.744)
Wow, here we go. All right, so let me give you the timeline and tell you what's going on here, tell you why the case went to court and why it went to jury. And now the verdict has been out. The verdict officially came out in December. And so this month started off with a bang for us in the HR profession. So April 2016, Rahab, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but Rahab Mohammed was hired as an instructional designer for Sherm.

And for about four years, she worked with them. And during this three and a half to four years, you know how we do performance reviews in HR, the one that came up in the case said that she was a solid performer or a role model in all criteria and did not raise any timeliness or meeting deadlines as an issue. That was important. Right.

Tony Benjamin (16:28.016)
By the way, lot of these lawsuits start the same way. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (16:32.566)
And so this was the only performance review that was brought up in this initial documentation. Now there may have been more later on when it actually went through the case, right? This was the preliminary hearing to determine if they were gonna go to actual court and get a jury. Because Sherm was trying to make it so that let's just settle this outside of court, right? Okay, everything started in 2020. This is when all the issues started hitting the fan for Sherm.

Tony Benjamin (16:58.48)
Can I can I just say that should be a theme. Everything started in 2020.

Steve-o (17:01.07)
I know, right? Well, it started in January. So this was people were only just now getting sick on the cruise boats, right? And so people were just getting sick. So we didn't really know 100 percent what was going to be coming. Little did we know, right? Yeah. But 19th of January of 2020, Mohammed was promoted to a senior instructional designer. Now, her supervisor's name was Carolyn Barley, and Carolyn actually recommended

Tony Benjamin (17:07.054)
Right. Right.

Little did we know a vicious seed had started.

Steve-o (17:28.908)
Mohammed to the role and when she got the promotion she congratulated her so that's kind of part of this scenario as We introduced Carolyn because Carolyn is where the problem starts happening because from January to June so over the course of about six months is where Carolyn apparently starts treating Mohammed less favorably than some of her white colleagues. Okay, and so the first report

Tony Benjamin (17:53.808)
At least that's the accusation,

Steve-o (17:55.342)
That's the accusation. So the first report that came out was on the 3rd of June, 2020, where Mohammed actually complained internally to the VP of Education, Jean Morris, that there was micromanaging going on, that she was being treated differently from some of her white peers, and that she, and because of it, she was having a hard time performing the work that was required of her. So this was on the 3rd of June, the very next day.

Tony Benjamin (18:20.352)
So by the way, let's touch on this just real quick here. Micromanaging, not against the law. Stupid, but not against the law. Number two.

Steve-o (18:23.085)
Mm-hmm.

Not against the law. It is stupid. It's definitely stupid. And I'm going to tell you what some of the micromanagement was, but yeah, go ahead.

Tony Benjamin (18:33.262)
Okay, yeah. So micromanaging not against the law. Number two, treating them differently, her differently than her coworkers, that is against the law, right? Based upon a protected class. So that's the big issue right here. And then the next thing you said was, what was after that? Anyways, there you go. I want to...

Steve-o (18:55.394)
Well, she was recently promoted and the performance reviews just gave her glowing reviews.

Tony Benjamin (19:00.088)
Right, right. then, and then her claim then was the differential treatment made it more difficult for her to do her job. Okay, so now you're talking about discrimination. And now you're also talking about creating a hostile worker environment around that discrimination. That's why it's important that she says it or that you're reading it off that way. Those are the accusations, right? The discrimination is holding me back, right?

Steve-o (19:06.744)
for

Steve-o (19:13.058)
Mm hmm. Correct.

Steve-o (19:19.438)
Correct. that's why this was correct. And this was, and that is why these things came up in the actual case, right? So the very next day on the 4th of June, the VP of Education that the original report went to has a Zoom meeting with Barley, the manager, and Mohammed, right? And during this Zoom meeting, Barley cries.

She just cries that she's being accused of this discriminatory practice. Now, Mohammed was kind of like, I don't think she cried. regardless, that's kind of what came out in the court case. OK, so there was some crying going on. Within a week on the 12th of June, Mohammed has another conversation with her manager, Barley, directly, Carolyn Barley. And at that point, Barley goes to, for the first time, goes to consult with Mike Jackson, who is the HR person.

And this is where it starts getting complicated. So Mike Jackson advises her to start documenting every conversation and interaction that they have, which makes perfect sense. That's what we should do. We should always document NHR. This also made Jackson responsible for starting an investigation, which he did. And what he did is he spoke to the Muhammad first.

Tony Benjamin (20:16.514)
Okay. Right.

Tony Benjamin (20:37.712)
Okay.

Steve-o (20:39.894)
And then he spoke with Barley's team without Barley. So the rest of the team to see if there's some discrimination going on. So this is looking pretty solid up to this point. And then one of the team members, Ebony Thompson, who's a black, I think a black woman, mentioned in the meeting with Jackson when they met that Barley did treat her differently, just like she was treating Mohammed differently. Different from Kerry Mills and Anne Godmire, who were both white, the other two people involved here.

Tony Benjamin (20:50.041)
Right?

Steve-o (21:07.928)
They reported nothing. They said that they didn't feel that there was any discrimination going on at all. But the black lady and obviously Mohammed, who I think is Egyptian from what I gather, they did feel like there was some treatment happening here. Now let me tell you how Mohammed described the micromanaging. Because when this report came out in June when she started talking to HR, what Barley started doing was started requesting to review every single email that Mohammed was sending out.

Tony Benjamin (21:18.67)
I think that sounds right.

Tony Benjamin (21:25.805)
Okay.

Steve-o (21:37.686)
and requested to start attending all of the meetings that Muhammad had with vendors. And then on top of that, she was discouraged from attending important project meetings where the rest of the team members were present.

Tony Benjamin (21:52.88)
Yeah, yes, it totally does. Hey, let's let's do this really quick. It like dropping that bomb. Okay, let's let's stop here for the read. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR. With expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that too.

Steve-o (21:53.006)
Does that make sense, what's going on there?

Steve-o (22:02.396)
But there you go, micromanaging.

Tony Benjamin (22:22.542)
Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together.

Steve-o (22:33.022)
That's right. Love Megastar.

Tony Benjamin (22:34.224)
Okay. Right. Thanks, Becca. Go ahead, Steve.

Steve-o (22:39.094)
Okay, so while Jackson, the HR person, is doing all of these meetings and trying to gather information and do the investigation, he is at the same time helping to ghostwrite emails regarding project timelines that gets emailed to Muhammad on the 12th of August. And basically what Barley does, the manager sends it to Muhammad, says, here's two projects that you're working on. You have to finish them by the end of the month.

which at this point is August 31st. So you have till the end of this month to finish these two projects that you're working on. basically what Jackson was trying to do is say, hey, we need more probability or cause here. And so let's give her deadlines here. If you're gonna terminate, yeah, here's some reasoning behind it. So, another strategic, there you go. So the very next day on the 13th of August, Nick Schalk, I think is his name, the chief global development officer,

Tony Benjamin (23:18.424)
If you're going to terminate this person, let's do it right.

Another strategic observation.

Steve-o (23:35.266)
directs Jackson to help Barley draft a response to the request because here's what happens. They emailed on Mohammed and Mohammed writes back and says, hey, there's some issues that I have with some of the vendors, which is why I'm struggling with this project. Can you help? Can you provide additional help? So Mohammed is asking Barley, I need additional help. I understand the deadline. OK, cool with that. But I'm going to need some additional help here with the vendors because of whatever the issues that are going on. And so Nick.

meets with Jackson, the HR person, the very next day and they draft a response. And this is what Nick says in the email. This offers an opportunity to get the right language on the table to correct her quickly or to support an eventual case for termination. That's what his email says to Jackson. Makes sense? So here we go. So the email, basically the response, they draft this response, they send it back to Muhammad and the email basically says,

Tony Benjamin (24:23.171)
Yes.

Steve-o (24:32.642)
The deadline is non-negotiable and you will receive no additional help. That's the response, okay? So 19th of August, about a week later, Muhammad files another complaint of racial discrimination, okay? But on this same day, so she files the complaint and the same day, Jackson, the HR person, already starts a draft of termination documents. And...

While Jackson says that he investigated this second, you know, filing, if you will, of discrimination, but there's no proof that he ever spoke to Mohammed about it. And there was no additional investigation that went into it. And so there's even though he said there was an investigation, doesn't look like a whole lot of investigation was going on because again, the very same day he's already drafting the termination documents, which goes into the retaliation piece.

Tony Benjamin (25:23.664)
Right, Yep, yep.

Steve-o (25:26.85)
Right? Because you start finding these complaints and then the very next thing we start doing is we start trying to find ways to terminate you as smoothly as possible. Exactly. So by the 31st of August, which is the end of the month, Sherm notifies Mohammed that her complaints were unfounded. And then, and because that was the deadline of when the projects were supposed to be turned in,

Tony Benjamin (25:33.934)
And especially if they're putting that intent in their email, right?

Steve-o (25:52.182)
She obviously receives these documents that says, we're now going to be terminating you. Now here's the interesting thing about this. And this is where this case gets a little crazy because the projects were actually turned in. But when you talk to Mills, so Mills, which was one of the white coworkers, Mills was also assigned as part of one of the projects that Muhammad was working on, but was never given the same deadline. And so Mills and Anne, the two ladies, they're like,

When they were talking about this and they were kind of testifying in court, they were signed to be part of it, just June, August 31st, but Mills was never told, Mills was never given the deadline, the same deadline that Muhammad was given, proof that there was definitely preferential treatment going on here. So when they interviewed Mills and Ann Godmere, who were never held to a deadline standard, and they even testified that they found that

Tony Benjamin (26:23.844)
So they were assigned to do part of it. And the whole project is due on August 31st. They're assigned to do parts of it, but they never get deadlines.

Tony Benjamin (26:41.241)
Yep, yep.

Steve-o (26:47.758)
quite odd. And here's what they quoted. They found it quite odd given that neither me nor Ann Godmeyer were held to the same standard. Ding ding dings. Here's the issue already, right? I mean, you've probably heard some issues already in some of this timeline. I mean, this is literally the course of about eight months, right? And so by the 1st of September, the termination documents are presented to Mohammed for failure to complete the August 31st deadline, which was weird because she did turn them in, even though it sounded like they weren't fully complete.

Tony Benjamin (26:57.562)
Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Steve-o (27:17.548)
But part of it was because Mills had her part to do and didn't know there was a deadline to begin with. And part of that put one of those projects was was was on her. And so by October of twenty four. Well, in twenty twenty two is when Mohammed finally decides to file the case. Right. For discrimination and then the retaliation, retaliation much more. But based on the discrimination. And then and then this is where this document comes from is the federal court in Colorado.

Tony Benjamin (27:23.631)
Right.

Steve-o (27:44.908)
denied the motion for summary judgment. So this document that where I pulled this timeline from was the summary judgment to say, is this enough that we can reasonably take it to a jury and allow the jury to decide and the judge decided yes, it is absolutely enough. And there are three things that they brought up.

Tony Benjamin (27:59.258)
Judge decides that the case is prima facie and they're going to move ahead.

Steve-o (28:02.99)
And there are three major issues that they brought up. They said, did they properly investigate the complaint? And the reason I'm bringing up these questions, because these questions came up in the court case. And I think there are something that all of us should consider when we might be going through our own investigations. Did they properly investigate the complaint? So was it investigated properly? I'm going let you answer that question in your mind. For you that's listening right now, you can answer that in your own mind. Do you feel Sherman investigated? We don't.

Tony Benjamin (28:18.704)
especially for those of you in large companies.

Tony Benjamin (28:29.336)
And we obviously don't know all the details of that, right? We obviously don't know all the details of that, but on the outset, right? That's the question.

Steve-o (28:36.6)
Yeah, on the outset, it appears that a proper investigation was not completed. Because to me, part of an investigation also means, which is the second question they bring up, was the investigator neutral? And based on Jackson's actions and the fact that he was already writing up termination documents and creating rebuttal emails and things like that, that's not an investigator who's remaining neutral in the matter. That's somebody who's already

basically made the decision and said, okay, let's start the process of termination over the next month or two, right? So that was a huge issue. So that's question number two, was the investigation or investigator, was he neutral? Which in HR, we have to be neutral, right? We're just collecting information. The last question to ask is, was the process adequately documented? And in part, no, because the second complaint,

there's no proof that an actual investigation was made because there was no documentation to the matter. The only documentation they had was on the same day the second was made, they were already writing up termination documents and drafting it, right? So anyway, these are just some really interesting things about this case. Obviously the federal court decided that, okay, Sherm is liable. So December of 2025, they were found liable. The verdict, we've just talked about that.

Tony Benjamin (30:00.624)
So the court allows it to go to jury trial and the jury decides in the facts that Sherman's liable. Given the law, which is the judge instructs them on the law, and then they say, to the law, find it. And this is important to understand. Juries are there to decide fact. That's what they're designed to do, because you hear two people talk about, give two different testimonies about something, and a jury, their job is to find fact between the two.

Steve-o (30:06.7)
Yep. Yep.

Steve-o (30:18.35)
Correct.

Tony Benjamin (30:29.304)
That's the point of a jury. And that's why jury decisions are sacrosanct usually in courts because they're the ones who determine fact. Courts try hard not to impose a determination of fact unless it's a process that they need to, but they try not to.

Steve-o (30:47.64)
Yeah. Now one last thing I want to make here, but one note before I kind of hand it off to you to Tony to address this is one of the key factors that I really felt like Sherm failed here. And honestly, to me, it was it was an extreme disappointment is that Sherm was asking that the fact that they were an H.R. expert type firm, they wanted that thrown out.

They didn't want jury members to know that they were an expert in HR related matters because they felt that it would persuade the jury to weigh them more heavily. Hello? Of course you would weigh an organization that deals with HR more heavily. And I'm glad that the judge allowed that as some of this evidence that as Shurm status as an HR expert was to be used because

Tony Benjamin (31:30.778)
Duh.

Steve-o (31:43.897)
The argument was, well, that it shouldn't be allowed, but to me, it was central to whether SHRM was actually upholding the standards that they're asking all of us to hold us to, right? And in our profession. If we're gonna teach, educate, and train members of our profession to follow these standards, then we should absolutely be following these same standards internally. Now, one last thing.

Barley or not Barley. Mohammed said that after reporting to the supervisor and HR and all that stuff, she even tried to message Johnny C. Taylor. Now there's no record of any communication there and it wasn't at least it wasn't in the part of the case that I read. She only mentioned it that she tried to message Johnny C. Taylor to let him know what was going on. But there's no evidence or at least nothing that I saw. Maybe it's in the actual court documents if there was some type of conversation there.

Tony Benjamin (32:28.304)
Okay.

Steve-o (32:42.764)
But there's no evidence that I could see that showed that there was an actual response from Johnny C. Taylor, you know, CEO, mean, he may not even know 100 % what's going on, he should, but sometimes HR is just taking care of matters like we do in business, right? And they're just trying to take care of matters. But let me just say that in my opinion, there were a lot of failures here on Shurm's part. And it is obvious why the verdict was in favor of Muhammad.

Tony Benjamin (32:54.926)
Right, right.

Steve-o (33:13.184)
And it's very disappointing. But what I don't agree with is I don't agree with, you know, as soon as this news came out and Tony, I'll hand it over to you at this point. Yeah, because it saddened me that there were so many people that were so willing to say, crucify, right, destroy SHRM, destroy the certifications, destroy everything, burn it down, burn down the house.

Tony Benjamin (33:24.324)
Yeah, this is where we bleed into the next section, right.

Steve-o (33:42.674)
And not only that, not only did they want to burn down the house, but they took every HR professional that has a SHRM certification or the volunteers at the state council level, volunteers at local SHRM chapter levels, completely just undermined and wanted to throw rocks at all of us who are involved in SHRM whatsoever. That to me is a gross misunderstanding.

Tony Benjamin (33:54.66)
local chapters.

Steve-o (34:08.606)
and a complete disconnect from what this is about. Yes, we need to hold sherm to these higher standards. And I'm glad the judge allowed that to be held to a higher standard, which led to this verdict. But to judge every chapter and every state council and every volunteer and the efforts that us as volunteers and professionals have gone through to take the certifications and go through that, I went through those tests and exams. Those were not easy exams, right?

And so to undermine the profession in general and to, it was almost like people are accusing each individual professional, how dare you even support Sherm? You're the bad guy now and so therefore let's throw a rock at you. That is so ridiculous to me. And so anyway, so that's part of the reason why when this court case came out, I was like, Tony, we got to talk about this on the podcast because.

Tony Benjamin (35:05.466)
Yeah.

Steve-o (35:05.526)
We cannot and I have a good really good post if you want to go see it on LinkedIn I wrote all about this that the whole purpose of this case I'm I'm grateful that shurm is being held accountable But that doesn't mean we need to burn the entire house down and I'm let Tony take over at this point So I'm gonna get a little passionate here But we're not here to burn the entire house down sure made a mistake They're gonna have to own up to that mistake and and honestly, I'm a little disappointed with some of the way that they presented themselves in this case and and

tried to misrepresent themselves in this case in my mind, which is completely against our code as part of the HR profession. When we sign up for the test and the exam, then we become a member of SHRM, there's a code of conduct that we agree to there. And I feel like SHRM did not live up to that code of conduct. That's really disappointing to me. And so I'm hoping that that will change. But here we go. Go ahead, Tony.

Tony Benjamin (35:49.582)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (35:55.79)
No, and that's.

No, no, I think that's great. And it, know, to kind of backtrack into that a little bit, just so everyone knows in my plaintiff work, I get complaints all the time from people at large companies who are making complaints to HR and they never hear back. HR never replies to them and says what happened in the investigation. Look, someone comes to you and complains that they're being discriminated against. You better

Steve-o (36:14.06)
Yeah, doesn't go anywhere.

Tony Benjamin (36:22.862)
Look, I'm a big fan of saying don't make something out to be a bigger deal than it is. Right. And I give this advice all the time to newer HR people, especially at smaller companies. But when somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I'm I have this problem. Don't blow it out of proportion. Don't formalize it more than it needs to be. Don't create this huge, I don't know, conspiracy theory where, you know, the black helicopters are coming to save the people who grew up on the moon. Blah, blah. Right. Don't don't you don't need to do all that.

Steve-o (36:51.983)
that was out there.

Tony Benjamin (36:54.156)
I'm trying to think, you know, conspiracy theories are kind of a thing now. And so you gotta, you gotta come, you gotta really say one way out there wild and wacky for it to be an exaggeration.

Steve-o (37:02.882)
Well, it's like assuming Vecna stole the children just because he liked, you know, playtime with kids. It's not what it was about, right? So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (37:07.28)
That's right. Right. Or or or that Zasha is really just changing her pronouns when she talks on Pluribus. Right. Anyways. Yeah. So it's a we they. Anyways, the point just being is, is that large companies have this problem. And as a matter of fact, I hopefully Melissa won't mind if I mentioned her name here, Melissa Musgrave. I sent her a message a few days ago and I said, hey, look,

Steve-o (37:15.374)
There you go.

Tony Benjamin (37:35.824)
I'm getting a lot of these complaints from bigger companies, help me understand this because I've only worked for one giant corporation my whole life. And we didn't have this problem there. And, and, but anyways, it was in these large companies, people are making complaints to HR, and there's a specific group of the in the HR group who's who is particularly assigned to handle these cases, like complaints have to go to a particular group within the HR team. And they're supposed to be the experts at handling these things.

Steve-o (37:42.146)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (38:05.594)
They'll send off a message to them, by the way, through a ticket system. How stupid do you have to be to have a ticket system? I got it. You got to save 40,000 employees and all that sort of stuff. I get why you want to have some sort of system, but come on already you've depersonalized it. So then it goes in, it goes into a black hole and employee files up two to three weeks later because they haven't heard anything. And the response from it is, that ticket's been closed. And you're like, wait, what?

Steve-o (38:15.758)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (38:33.732)
That's stupid. And that's kind of what. Right. Right. Now, Sherm wasn't right. Right. Well, you have no idea if there was an investigation or not. Right. And so exactly. Now, Sherm wasn't quite that bad in this because there are there is some looking into it, it sounds like. And there is some action taken to look into stuff. But what Melissa kind of mentioned to me and I think is true is that a lot of these HR business partners are going to the manager and getting their side before they even interview the person.

Steve-o (38:34.631)
No discussion, no investigation.

Steve-o (38:42.018)
Yeah, because they didn't tell you anything.

Tony Benjamin (39:03.342)
They get their side of it and then they're like, okay, how do we manage this through? Look, if you're doing that, you're dumb. Let me just say this. If someone makes an accusation to you and the first thing you do is go to the person they're accusing to find out what the real story is, you're already doing it wrong. Just exactly. So

Steve-o (39:21.848)
You've already made your decision. Just the words that you said there to go find the real story, you've already decided that what they're saying is outlandish.

Tony Benjamin (39:32.208)
Exactly. So anyways, I have a problem with this. I have a real problem with this. look, and to that degree, and look, whether or not someone has to be unbiased and all that sort of stuff, what you have to be is open to any fact pattern that emerges. You don't have to be unbiased. Because look, as famously said,

Steve-o (39:34.126)
And that's the second question, right?

Tony Benjamin (39:58.34)
we in HR don't work for the employee, we work for the company. That's who signs our check. With that said, what's usually good for the employee is good for the company. And that's just straight out. So generally, you're trying to look out for both and make it work. Not balance them, you're looking out for both of them. But you should be able to look into something and find a fact pattern. And if it goes to a point where there are conflicts of interest with senior executives, then you bring in somebody from outside who truly is unbiased to give that that opinion.

Steve-o (40:01.55)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (40:27.524)
But anyways, having said that, that to me seems right there, that process that they're going through seems like a mistake. Now look, there's details you and I that maybe were done in the trial that we're not aware of. And there's some mitigating factors there that could be. Right, right, right, right. So, look, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there that maybe we're not privy to, but it sounds to me like not handled well.

Steve-o (40:39.694)
Correct. Yeah, because again, this was the preliminary side of it. Yeah, the summary judgment.

Tony Benjamin (40:55.148)
Now, on the other hand, we've all been in a position where you're moving to terminate somebody and they make some sort of accusation to see why a and the answer is do it the right way. If you just roll your eyes and like, they're just accusing so and so of discrimination because they don't want to be fired. Yes, that's exactly what they're doing. Number one. Number two, who cares? It's still an accusation of discrimination. And you, you better look into it and make sure

Steve-o (41:15.992)
Yeah, you have to investigate.

Thank

Tony Benjamin (41:22.65)
that you know what's really going on. And the first person you talk to is the person making the accusation. Because how can you find out if it's true or not if you don't even freaking understand it? Like, come on, people, like, silly. So OK, now I will say this. I have no problem with your making the argument. Please don't judge us as an HR expert company. Right? You should just judge us on the merit of the case. Now, I will. Right. I would say that's a legal tactic.

Steve-o (41:45.88)
Yeah, that's like a political move, right?

Tony Benjamin (41:51.008)
you should take whatever legal tactic is available to you in court, because obviously we're talking about millions of dollars, okay. And innumerable immense damage to shrooms, whatever. So I understand you wanting to take any legal tactic you can to make it work. That's how this works. That's why when news people are accused of libel or slander or whatever, and it goes to court, they often use that defense, look, no one takes us seriously anyways. So and it's a legal tactic.

Fine, it looks stupid. It's a dumb argument, but okay, I get why they would do that. It does make them look bad, though. Incredibly stupid for them publicly and politically to make that argument. Okay, now.

Steve-o (42:35.886)
Well, it's interesting too, some of the people who are like on the far left, right? That are just attacking SHRM like crazy. Shortly after this case started going into coming to fruition, they came out with their new SHRM workplace investigation trainings. And it is kind of funny, right? And they use it as a say, okay, here's SHRM creating this article on how to guide on how to conduct workplace investigations right in the middle of them.

Tony Benjamin (42:43.15)
Yes, this rubber, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (42:52.208)
That's funny. That's ironic. Isn't it ironic?

Steve-o (43:04.749)
doing their own workplace investigation. So yeah, there is an article. The article they were referencing though came out in October of 2024, because I did research this a little bit. so 2024, I mean, we're well into the case already, because it was filed way back in 2022 and the actual investigation, if you will, took place in 2020. So maybe they learned something from that investigation. I don't know. But man, there was definitely some misses here. So anyway.

Tony Benjamin (43:33.633)
Exactly.

Steve-o (43:33.752)
There's a little bit of HR humor.

Tony Benjamin (43:37.592)
Look, it's all super ironic. If you ask me, it's hilarious. On a certain level, it's all funny. I if you can't laugh, then you're just going to cry. Anyway, this is worse for the HR profession than Coldplay was. It's just bad. we need a different punch line.

Steve-o (43:40.054)
Thank

Steve-o (43:45.794)
Yeah.

Steve-o (43:52.18)
I know, right? Darn, everybody's gonna forget Coldplay now.

Steve-o (44:01.954)
I know, I know.

Tony Benjamin (44:02.544)
So here's the, here's the, now that is the excuse.

I really believe this case is the excuse right to go after sherm by a lot of people. And I want to give this background and let me let me caution everybody what they're about to hear next. So I'm a polypsi major I was national debate champion and both those things mean that I can look at things dispassionately and I can call balls and strikes in a way that I believe is impartial even though I may have strong opinions about stuff but there are certain just ways this

to state a fact and look at the ball game and say good move, bad move. Okay, so I just, I want to throw that out there. And what I'm going to talk about is not the facts, not. Right, yes.

Steve-o (44:45.102)
Yeah, we don't like it when our team is losing, but we also have to recognize why they're losing and be impartial to that, right?

Tony Benjamin (44:51.664)
That's right. When there's pass interference on the last play of this freaking Steelers game against the stupid Browns and there's pass interference and I don't call it. Yes. Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Not that it sticks in my car or anything, but anyway. So, so here's here's here's a few things that we all need to understand in in no and.

Steve-o (44:58.574)
I'm glad you said it. wasn't going to say it. But I was watching the Bears game at the time because it went right down to the wire.

Tony Benjamin (45:17.974)
These play into this whole argument and no one can convince me that they don't. Number one, when Johnny C. Taylor came on board and he started to say policies, not politics. When I first heard that phrase, I was really worried that, great, here goes Sherm. They're going to go in on the whole woke thing and they're going to start pushing this. They're going to start lobbying and everything else or getting involved in the political system. I was pleasantly surprised, however,

Look, and I'll be free to admit a majority of people in this profession, in our profession are left of center. And that's perfectly fine. But that was an initial thing of it. I think everyone was excited to see where Sherm was going to go. And what I found, pleasantly surprising, is I found them largely apolitical. I found them mostly business centric. And look, I'll be honest with you, from somebody who's on the right side of the aisle,

I wasn't very happy with that. wish they had done more, whatever, but they didn't. but that's fine. I was impressed that they were largely apolitical and mostly policy focused. And I really liked that. Now here's the thing that you got to understand though, that in America today, sometimes when African American or black people take stances that are not overtly on the left, they are accused of being traitors to their race.

and this happens all the time. All you gotta do is look at the mean things that are said about Clarence Thomas to know this. So that comes out and it's out there and it pounds him, okay? Now that's fine, he weathers it pretty well, but it's a low rumble that happens. The next phase of this is that Scherm decides to take out the E out of DEI, that they will support diversity and inclusion, but they do not like the term equity. Now,

for anybody who wants to get into why that may be or whatever, go back to our episode with with Katie Connell and and that's right. And she'll give it all to you. And I thought that was a great discussion. And Katie's story that she told when she was on stage at Utah Sherman, what was then Wicon, right? The Work Elevated Conference. That all plays into this. So but they took equity out. And look, there's a very good philosophical reason for them to have done it now.

Steve-o (47:10.614)
With Katie Connell. Yep. You can learn all about that.

Tony Benjamin (47:35.568)
Everybody has their different opinion of what DEI really means. And I would say that Schirm defined it as diversity, equity, and again, going back to that Katie conversation about finding everybody having an outcome, not an input, and inclusiveness, right? So they took out the E out of that. That caused a firestorm by those who were left of center, and it was a bad firestorm.

Steve-o (47:53.218)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (48:03.222)
Not the least of which because an African American CEO had done it or made the final decision or better yet carried the water for it. Okay. So I think all of those things play into it. Then at the beginning of this year, when Donald Trump is putting together his administration, the name of Johnny C. Taylor floats around for the secretary for the department of labor. Johnny does not come out and poo poo those things and say he won't take it.

And then everybody who was worried about this, their worst nightmare was confirmed that Johnny's a secret right wing agent who's infiltrating sherm. and done, done. And we need done, done, done. But anyways, yeah, that's so that all of a sudden their worst fears are manifest. Right. And so now now it starts going along.

Steve-o (48:43.608)
And all of a sudden...

Tony Benjamin (48:57.846)
And it starts to build up. there are a lot of people who are very bitter about the DEI thing, and they're upset about it, and they're really going hard on this thing. Okay, so with all of that said, now I'd like to get into something that Steve and I, and we're not going to mention names here, we know some people that have worked for SHRM. We've had conversations about this.

Steve-o (49:19.96)
that work for SHRM, we've talked with them.

Tony Benjamin (49:25.122)
And look, I'm this is sad for me to say in a public setting, but I think it needs to be said. Right. Right. The discussion. So now when you think about Sherman, all the things that they promote and the great workforce and culture stuff that they promote and talk to you about when they talk about that, you would think that'd be a really, really cool place to work. Very understanding, supportive, not necessarily soft, squishy and hugs all the time.

Steve-o (49:30.478)
It needs to be said, it does.

Tony Benjamin (49:51.258)
But you would think that they do it right and they build culture right. And it's the workforce of the future and all that turns out not so much. So that the description that was given to me was that it is a toxic work environment from executive level leadership that that atmosphere is bad. It's really, really bad that those people are ruthless and cutthroat. Now, I don't know for sure because I don't work there.

Okay, I have no idea. And all I can think of now is all those times I said that Sherm could sponsor this podcast. So we are not sponsored by Sherm. They rejected our cries and requests. But the point was is that there I have talked to people that work there and they said it is bad. Those executives treat people like dirt. It's a toxic. Right, right.

Steve-o (50:44.568)
Yeah, there are some issues, right, that are there.

Tony Benjamin (50:48.334)
Now I asked specifically about Johnny C. Taylor and the information I was given about that is Johnny is better than all the rest of them, but that's a low bar to clear. And, and certainly the disappointment and the people I talked to was that he was not fixing it, that he was willing to let it go on. Now with that said, I don't know for sure again, I'm not there, but let's assume just for a minute that the reports that I'm hearing coming out of Sherm are accurate in this. Okay. That's fine.

Now what it means is that you're starting to get recordings coming out of sherm meetings where they're displaying and they're putting out there the dirty laundry for everybody to hear this. Look people when I as a plaintiff attorney or represent somebody against the company a lot of the times I say eventually these practices will put them out of business because they're ruthless they're mean they're not nice there that doesn't always mean they violated the law but not good business practice.

Those things bite you. And by the way, this is now biting sherm because this is the excuse. Right. Right. And out of that. So I've said forever happy employees don't sue you. They don't. So if somebody is messing up and they think they're being discriminated against, if they're really happy in a good supportive environment, they try to work it out. They'll try to figure it out. They don't. They'll come to you and say, hey, look, this is happening. I don't like it. But look, let's fix this. Let's just make this better. Not I'm going to get you.

right? I'm going to set this all up so I make sure I get my pound of flesh. And who knows if Mohammed did that or not. I don't want to put words in their mouth. the point I'm getting at here is that happy employees don't see you. And there's obviously something going on at Shurm in terms of those things. So with all of that said, there's a lot of pent up frustration and pressure coming both into the company from outside and from the inside going out. And in the middle of all of that,

drops this lawsuit. And of course, everything now is on the table. And okay, little side note when when we were originally looking into doing the podcast, I did a lot of listening to different podcasts, and to try and find out there and because this funny this episode is super funny and really relaxing and entertaining. But

Tony Benjamin (53:10.576)
I did a whole lot of research and listening to a ton of different podcasts and frankly I thought they all stunk. And there's one out there who's been carrying the water on this subject and that's the HR besties. And I've listened to their podcast about this stuff and some of their legal analysis is pretty good. I'll tip my hat to them on that sort of stuff. But I don't like the rest of the commentary and stuff that they go through. They I would I would shrink and freak out if they were my HR department in my company. I'll tell you that.

It's just, it's not good. But they have made it a cause celeb now at that podcast to take sherm down a notch. And, and they are going after it. Now look, they got sources, they're exploiting all the inside stuff that we were just talking about, everything that's going on there fine. That's what they do. They break news, they talk about this stuff. Great. Good for them and their podcasts and their listeners. Fancy.

I think it's irresponsible to talk about it the way they do sometimes in the snarkiness that goes along with that. Not that I'm ever not snarky. that's fine, ladies. But anyways, it hasn't helped. But all of that now is bubbling out to the outside. And is what you were just saying, Steve, now we're kind of coming full round circle. We'll get back to the last third of this here. But the now there is a movement to destroy.

I'm going to turn back in my certification. I'm going to take the HR certification and get away from this. I'm not going to renew. I'm not going to be part of anything related to SHRM. I'm going to

Steve-o (54:37.206)
I'm not going to renew my membership. I'm going to volunteer and all those things. It drives me crazy.

Tony Benjamin (54:44.27)
Right. They're all about they're all a bunch of racist pigs and I hate them and I'm glad they're getting what's coming to them and all that sort of stuff. And and look I'm sure there's some valid reasons why people don't like sherm. I get it. That could be very much the case. What I don't like though is this mistaking corporate national sherm with the sherm that 90 percent of you interact with in more than a website.

Steve-o (55:11.704)
Yeah. Your local chapters.

Tony Benjamin (55:11.992)
So everybody who interacts with National Shurm, it's usually on a freaking website. Everything else, everything else is your local chapter and state council. And what I do not like is this idea of burn it to the ground. And I hear often and people, and look, there's some, there's some validity to some of these arguments that the state committee never produces anything that's really of help to me. I go to their conference and nothing's new and it's all warm and fuzzy hugs and new age crap.

Okay, there's probably some truth to some of that. I'm not gonna deny that. But if you want to improve that stuff, freaking go get involved. Go get involved and fix it. Look, and if...

Steve-o (55:52.248)
Yeah, and voice your opinion and voice it. Yeah. That's exactly right.

Tony Benjamin (55:56.408)
I promise you, I promise you it's easier than you think to get involved in your local chapter and or a state committee. It is so easy to get involved in those things and they desperately need competent people because as we all know with boards, what happens is people volunteer because they want it on their resume and then they don't fall through unless they're paid, right? And you can hold them accountable, but in most cases they don't, right?

So if you really want to make things better, it's only look, it's half the volunteers that carry the weight of the other half. I'm just like that assignment you did in the third grade. But with that said, go volunteer if you want to improve it, go volunteer or look, even if you don't want to be part of SHRM, go volunteer with some other organization. There's other organizations out there that I don't like as much that I don't think is do as good of a job, but they have volunteer staffs and things and they're collecting data and information and putting stuff out there.

Go be part of that, raise it up, do something different, offer an alternative or do something different to improve the atmosphere in which we find ourselves. But don't just sit and tear down and try to destroy and burn something to the ground. Now I have no idea because unlike Steve, I did not take the SHRM certification courses and pass those tests. I haven't done that. I took HRCI courses and I'll tell you that was the hardest test I've ever taken in my freaking life. And I was so glad to be done.

Steve-o (57:21.614)
You

Tony Benjamin (57:23.12)
I'm so glad to be done with that test. But with that said, I don't know if the SHRM certifications are great, not good, bad, whatever they test you on. I have no idea if that's easier, harder, whatever. But that is a separate question from whatever SHRM did in this lawsuit or DEI or the political leanings of the CEO. Those things are all separate deals than certification. And look, let's all admit this.

You don't have to have a certification to be successful in HR. You frankly don't. But what it does is it puts a label on you that says this person understands the compliance aspects of human resources. That's all it does for you. It's like my MBA. The MBA at the end of my name and my signature does nothing more than Tony has studied business at an advanced level and completed the entire freaking course. That's it. And so the

Steve-o (58:11.788)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (58:18.954)
And man, it's a lot because I'm doing my master's program right now. And let me tell you, it's a lot of work that goes into a lot of reading, a lot of application, business application, all the things.

Tony Benjamin (58:24.494)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (58:29.88)
Right. Right. And so it but the certification is a separate question from the entity of the national organization Sherman whether or not they treat people well where they work. And yes is it ironic that they give out the best policies and whatever. Yes it is. Are they quote unquote the controlling people and they set the policy standard for all the rest of us. I sure hope not. I look we've we've joked on here you don't have to be a pioneer you just have to be a pirate. Right.

Steve-o (58:57.846)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (58:58.256)
You just go to Sherman you get a template and you start working on it But if you're not thinking through the policy that you're putting out that's on you Like you can't point to Sherman say Sherman wrote a terrible policy for me and it's in my handbook and I can't believe that happened They're Cool You ding At least read it

Steve-o (59:13.39)
Stop copying and pasting people.

That was the biggest mistake I talked about in my book was the copy and paste when we switched from job ads to job descriptions. So that's exactly what this is all about.

Tony Benjamin (59:24.622)
Right, right. Especially when you want to recruit elves from Middle Earth, you can't do that. It doesn't work. So that's doubly so.

Steve-o (59:32.558)
especially ones that want to work for Dennis as a dentist. No, call you Dennis out there. So my, my father-in-law, he, my former father-in-law, passed away a year and a half ago. His favorite movie during the holidays was Rudolph the Red and his reindeer and his favorite elf was the one who wanted to be a dentist. And so he always loved that. So I just, have to bring it up this time of year. You know, one other thing, Tony, another, another thing, and this was actually filed in, in a 2024, October of 2024.

Tony Benjamin (59:48.058)
Be a dentist, that's right. Yeah.

No, but it's go ahead. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:00:02.446)
There's another case going on with Sherm right now as well with an actual, not an employee, but a candidate who received a job offer. And that job offer was rescinded. So the job offer was received on June 3rd of 2024. And the reasonable accommodation, we talk about ADA and accommodations, right? She has a service dog because I believe she has diabetes, if I recall correctly.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:05.359)
awesome. Yes, thank you.

Steve-o (01:00:30.222)
And that service dog is to help alert her if her blood sugar and what have you gets low enough that it becomes dangerous. And so that service animal is there to help protect her. And Sherm instead within a month and a half on July 15th rescinded that job offer in 2024. And again, there's not a lot of detail in this case at all. That's pretty much all we know at this point.

is that she had a service dog, she requested the accommodation, it was denied, and the rescinding of the offer of employment happened within six weeks of that offer. And that's where it stands. It's the Torres case, if you guys wanna look it up. I think it was in Fairfax, Virginia, or Fairfax County. But anyway, another case coming up. We'll see where this one goes, and maybe Tonya will talk about this later if it gets to a certain point.

But the thing is, is like Tony said, we have to live to the higher standard. And by golly, I think SHRM also needs to live that higher standard. And if it takes a slap like this or a punch in the face, then let the punch be landed correctly. And then let's be the voice to expect more out of SHRM. If we're gonna continue to volunteer and do some of the things that we do for SHRM, then we have every right to expect more from them and ask it of them.

And that's where we can take the stand and let's make shurm even better than it currently is. Again, I know we don't have a lot of control over what happens at the corporate level, right? At the corporate offices, it's its own entity because we all run independently of that. But I still think that there's, can voice our opinion and hold them to a higher standard, which I think they should have been held to in the first place. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm glad these things are coming out. It's unfortunate.

It's disappointing, especially when they're supposed to hold up the standard. But, you know, if people judge me based on every mistake I made in my life, I certainly wouldn't be where I'm at today. And so I appreciate the corrective actions that have happened over my lifetime and corrective measures that took place and conversations, the hard conversations, especially that have made me into the professional that I am. And so I, you know, I apologize if I lean more on the side of mercy.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:37.429)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (01:02:55.202)
But I would much prefer mercy than just simple justice. And because justice would have killed me a long time ago, right? So anyway, I...

Tony Benjamin (01:03:04.878)
So well, the eye, right. And look, if Sherm messed up, and it sounds like they did, then they need to be held accountable, just like any other business. Right.

Steve-o (01:03:11.394)
They need to pay for it, period. And they need to own it. Because right now it doesn't feel like they're trying to own it. They're trying to push back.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:21.584)
No. And again, look, that's a legal thing and there's eleven and a half million dollars on the line. So I understand. Right. That that's a that's as much of a business decision as anything else. And and trust me in doing what I've done with my plenty of work, I've seen a lot worse. So there's a lot worse.

Steve-o (01:03:24.728)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:03:37.07)
Yeah, right. Well, and I just feel bad because that 11 and a half million dollars comes out of our fees, right, that we paid a sherm to be members and all that. That's the argument, right? A lot of people are saying, don't renew, don't renew. And yeah, before we throw the rock, we just need to sit back. Oh, yeah, it will. A lot more.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:43.63)
Yeah, exactly. Right.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:50.672)
Yeah, it's going to cost them a lot more than the 11 and a half million. It's going to cost them a lot more. So no, and I think this is all important. And I look in the new case. I'll be honest, the case I'm wanting to see is the support mini pony. That's the court case I want to see. the support like the state of Utah recognizes many, many ponies as a support animal.

And I am waiting for the freaking case that comes down where someone is suing because the company they want to work for won't accommodate a mini pony in their office. I'm, I'm so waiting for that to come down.

Steve-o (01:04:33.24)
Would they actually allow that in the office? See, I personally am allergic to horses. So if I was employed there, I would struggle with it, right? So there would be a struggle for me.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:41.39)
Right, right. Well, you'd have a conversation with HR, no, like there's two animals that are recognized as support animals, right? Dogs and mini ponies. Yeah, the mini horse, whatever they are, the little, yes. so, not the Clydesdale, thank goodness. Can you imagine a Clydesdale in the office?

Steve-o (01:04:53.358)
Mm-hmm. Of course.

Just Mini Ponies.

So not horses in general.

Steve-o (01:05:04.365)
That's what I was hoping for. I just want to Clydesdale to work.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:09.052)
The receptionist is selling beer on the side and she's got a Clydesdale next to her as her support animal. But like there's, there's, there's so much, like I look at some of this stuff and I think how, how ridiculous does it have to get, right? But by the same token, the law is what the law is. And I don't know in this particular case with what Sherm's being accused of what the right answer there was, cause I don't have all those details yet.

Steve-o (01:05:28.174)
It is.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:36.322)
I'm willing to let the court process in both cases, willing to let the court process play out. The only thing that bothers me is that there is more playing into this and everybody wants to burn it to the ground instead of reform it. And that's fine. Do your thing, whatever you want to do. Number one, think Sherman will survive. Number two, I think that they, not even a majority of the people will leave it.

It will be a small fraction and that there will be reforms in SHRM, especially as all of those recordings and everything get played around the internet about how toxic the work environment is. And, and let me just say this for all of the work environments out there that are truly toxic and not just the ones that people say are toxic because there's two different things. But for all those workplaces, the future is coming for you. Eventually you will have to do it or

Steve-o (01:06:17.016)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:06:30.828)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:33.978)
You'll go out of business or you'll be sued out of business. Because it only takes a little bit of time, and I've done enough plaintiff work to know that those complaints are real and important. Yeah, and look at.

Steve-o (01:06:46.04)
They're extremely important. Yeah. And that's why documenting and I don't know, just being non-judgmental upfront as to what you think's actually going on. Like I said, I feel like in this case, especially that HR person who just started writing up documentation for termination with, you know, while they're doing the investigation, that makes no sense to me. Why in the world, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:07:08.144)
You got to stop and look, everyone knows, everyone has a story of someone who gets a bad review and they go in and they complain to the manager about discrimination and everything comes to a halt and all why this is going on and even afterwards the company treats the poor performing employee with kid gloves, right? That happens. The difference is,

is that you need to pause no matter what and look into it and see what's really going on. So I, when I worked for Dish Network, I had an employee that we fired and he accused me of racism saying that we were firing him because of his race. And I said, what makes you believe that? And he went on about something that other employees had said supposedly and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, look, your quality of your work sucks. Like it's really bad.

And he said no, I'm being discriminated against so I put off terminating the guy for about three business days and I looked into it I interviewed a whole bunch of people asked around try to find anybody that could corroborate that looked online even looked for off-site off work stuff that maybe Indicate that stuff couldn't find anything right? So I did everything I went back to the employee terminated him I went to the unemployment hearing because he filed for unemployment

Steve-o (01:08:22.101)
yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:31.312)
And I went to that and the judge ruled on his behalf. And we want to know why the judge ruled on his behalf. said, because you didn't fire him immediately upon this. You waited three days before you terminated him. So I'm going to rule in his favor. This is exactly. And that's what I said to the administrative law judge. I said, just to make your point clear, however,

Steve-o (01:08:46.36)
So your investigation actually hurts you.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:56.258)
You're telling me that when somebody accuses me of something and by law, I should do an investigation to find out if it's true. That means no matter what, I have to pay them unemployment. And the administrative law judge looks me straight in the face and said, that's exactly what I'm And swell. So look, you're going to pay a price for some of this. It's going to slow down you getting rid of bad employees. It's going to do all of those things. And yes, that your managers hate that. I get it.

Better that than an 11 and a half million dollars. My cardinal rule with this stuff is with investigations and everything else, play the system. Play it out. People who abuse FMLA, who abuse the ADA, play the system. The system is designed to weed out the fakers and the liars. And if you play it out correctly, it will do it. You don't have to shorten the process.

just to make it easier on your manager and all that sort of stuff. You just need to let the system play out, the process play out, and it will work itself out. There you go. I feel like I got something off my chest. Do you Steve?

Steve-o (01:10:06.094)
Wow. I know I feel like you were up on a soapbox there, like really going to town. No, just I and thank you to listeners for kind of hearing this out. And again, this is real raw stuff that we're talking about. mean, all the cases and things that we've brought up so far. This is probably one of the hardest ones that I've had to research.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:14.842)
preacher brother. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Steve-o (01:10:36.494)
because I have dedicated my entire HR career to SHRM. I have volunteered in every capacity that you can think of in SHRM, even at the state level. The only role that I haven't volunteered at is as a MAC representative, which is the highest volunteer role, but it's all voluntary. And I can tell you that, man, if I knew stuff like this was going on, I would have definitely voiced my opinion about it, right?

And so as we're learning all these things, I just think again, we need to stand up for our profession. We need to respect those around us who went through the certification process, who still volunteer, who still give up their time and work for the community. Because let me tell you that the people in my local chapter here, those are the people I still have a tremendous amount of respect for. And if you want to start going and throwing them under the bus because of what Sherman National has done, I just think that's the wrong approach. That's not.

That's not how we talk about this. That's not how we come to a resolution just by throwing people under the bus. We have to hold them accountable. They're being held accountable, which is great. And let's go out there and let's make the profession better. That's the goal. And that's what we really need to be focused on. Next year, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, right? Can you imagine if the founding fathers, if all they wanted to do, they move here to a new country and

Tony Benjamin (01:11:54.458)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:12:00.184)
They just want to throw everybody under the bus and destroy and burn everything that exists in this country to prove a point. We never would have founded this country. They knew that if we're going to continue to stay here and function as a true country and an organization, that we can't just burn everything to the ground and throw everybody under the bus. We have to stand up for truth, freedom, right? And yeah, I mean, that's what we have to do.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:27.298)
And justice, of course, and mercy. Yep.

Steve-o (01:12:28.926)
And yeah, justice, the American way, right? know, ethics are so important in the workplace, and that's why we have these laws in place. And I think that we can live these laws and we can practice what we preach, if you will. But let's not fail our fellow HR professionals by throwing the accreditation under the bus, throwing the organization under the bus, throwing the volunteerism under the bus. I just think that's that's wrong.

That's where I was kind of angry and frustrated a little bit by those who just suddenly started attacking right away. We're all human. If I judge people in their darkest moments, let me tell you, I wouldn't have a lot of friends.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:09.694)
One.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:15.406)
No, you're exactly right. And let's again reiterate the point that Sherman's brought a lot of this on themselves. But I agree with you. Don't, don't burn it all down or try to destroy it because, because of a bad thing that's happened. There's no organization in the world that doesn't make it to the top that doesn't pay the price for making it to the top.

Steve-o (01:13:21.016)
They have.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:39.338)
And there's a price to be paid. And sometime that is the company having a life of its own and a momentum of its own that no one seems to be in control of. That's really gross. That happens all the way. So what do you do? You repair it. You fix it. You make it better.

Steve-o (01:13:53.186)
Yeah, you repair, you fix it, you make adjustments, and you move forward. I mean, that's what we're all about in our profession anyway.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:56.708)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:01.998)
Yes, that's right. So, Steve, anything else you want to say about that?

Steve-o (01:14:05.326)
No, I'm done. I I can't talk about this enough. Like I said, there's a lot of disappointment and you know potential anger and frustration here, but at the same time there's a lot of

just a new found respect for the HR professionals who I have seen take this to the next level and continue to be the mentor, continue to be the guide, continue to volunteer, continue to uphold their standards and just quietly serve. And so to those out there who are still doing that in this community, I salute you, I see you, and I appreciate it.

because that's what this should be about is saluting one another and really just focusing on our community. Wow, you need some more music there, Tony.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:54.128)
I don't know, just wanted to turn a little, that was moving and I just figured it needed a little background music to go with it.

Steve-o (01:15:01.564)
Ha!

Well, like I said, I put a post on on LinkedIn literally a day after this came out because it just irked me the attacks, right? The blatant attacks. yeah, so if you want to go, you can go read that. But yeah, we just it's so important, guys. Let's just love one another and be kind and compassionate and all the things we talked about with Andrea two weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:14.276)
Yep. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:25.464)
Right, right. And, and look, and why doesn't everybody send us an email, tell us your thoughts. We'll read them. We'll read a bunch of them on air and we'll kind of, if you want to, if you want to comment, send in a comment, let's, let's have different points of view on all of this stuff. I, I think that,

Steve-o (01:15:39.298)
Yeah, I agree.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:43.28)
And everyone on this podcast heard me say before you don't have to agree with me to for me to acknowledge good points. And there's probably aspects of this I haven't thought of. And please enlighten us, help us open the door, show us the way. But if you have a comment or something, send it to the HR life podcast at gmail.com. And let's have a let's have a conversation about this because I, I think this is this is something that affects everyone in our profession.

Steve-o (01:15:47.768)
Mm-mm.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:11.374)
just like the freaking Coldplay concert effect in his soul. Right? So.

Steve-o (01:16:14.264)
Yeah.

Which we might need to do a follow up on that. Did you know that both of them are thriving?

Tony Benjamin (01:16:23.15)
Well, there's some additional things that have come out about that she has spoken about since since then that is quite. Yeah, didn't took after Gwyneth Paltrow and for doing that, I had an everything. Yeah, I don't know that we should do. We should do the People magazine special episode of that one. That's that's right. The US magazine or People or the Inquirer version. That's right.

Steve-o (01:16:28.536)
Yeah, yeah, she did an interview and everything. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:16:38.203)
Gwyneth. Gwyneth.

Steve-o (01:16:44.142)
People Magazine. my gosh. HR celebrities. The red carpet. We're going to interview everybody on the red carpet, guys. We'll have comments from everyone. Not the red seat, we'll have the red carpet.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:54.98)
That's right. That's right. OK. If there's nothing else we want to talk about there, just so everybody knows that the podcast has a new page on on Facebook. Yeah, we're starting to post stuff there. And I'm trying to work on getting out more little clips.

Steve-o (01:17:11.308)
Facebook, right? Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:20.048)
From the podcast the post in those situations. Yeah people speaking and I think it's working out pretty good I mean I'll have to tell me if you like the red background that I didn't know who do this but on the screen where Steve and I record there's a big red square around everything it's kind of branded now when people get on with us and and that that brand mark carries over into the little video clips that it creates for us out of our audio, so

Steve-o (01:17:21.782)
of people speaking,

Steve-o (01:17:39.246)
kind of fun.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:45.955)
Anyways, I'm interested to hear what you think. The ones that I dropped today from Mark Tolman were pretty cool. And there's more of those coming. So but anyways, check us out on Facebook and share the word over there. And we'd really appreciate that. And of course, on LinkedIn, I think we'll produce a LinkedIn page as well for the podcast. And so you can drop us comments and everything there as well. And just spread the word for us. We're really grateful for all of you as we enter the new year.

Happy New Year. We hope it all is going well. Now's the time to, you know, renew our strive and all that and and not get depressed because it's dark half the day. But get out there and do your thing and and and have a good year. And we wish you all the best. But thank you and help us spread the word. We're really looking forward to that. We have amazing guests still coming up. And I think we've got now so we may have some like regular segments.

on a quarterly and annual basis. So I'm really excited about that stuff.

Steve-o (01:18:44.302)
Yeah.

And you know, one more invite for our listeners, if there are any topics that you would be interested in hearing more about, especially if there are certain individuals that you think we should have on the podcast, let us know. You those types of things we listen to, right? In fact, a few of the people we've had on are because of some comments that people have made to me. And so we've gone out, we've found some of those people to have them on the podcast. so please, please, please let us know.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:51.716)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:19:16.084)
And that way we can have more people that you just want to hear from and hear about.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:21.422)
Yep, exactly. Although we have reached out to Brene Brown. No chance there.

Steve-o (01:19:27.628)
Yeah, I was already rejected by Brene. Actually, it wasn't even Brene directly. It was one of her teammates. But she offered some really other cool people. So maybe we'll have something from that company. We'll see what happens there. Brene has stepped down for a while. She's not really in the spotlight much anymore. She's focusing on family. Good for her. She's practicing what she preaches. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:36.085)
Maybe that's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:47.684)
Yep. Yeah. So, and we, like I said, we are looking for some people with HR humor and some stuff like that to kind of lighten things up a little bit. Not that this episode was dry or bitter or serious. Bittersweet, serious.

Steve-o (01:20:00.11)
It's bittersweet, right? mean, and hopefully you got some good information from this episode, especially at the beginning as we kind of address and talk about the actual case so you know what's actually happening. Again, we try to do a lot of research on these things. And like I said, sometimes we're limited on some of the access that we have. with what we can get, we try to share as much as possible so you can kind of get the big picture.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:11.578)
Yep. I thought you were talking about pleuribus. I was going to say, yes, that's good information.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:29.828)
Yep. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. But thank you to everybody again. And Steve, you really are a big deal. And I thank you for all you do for us and the podcast and everything else. Thanks, everybody. before we go. Pucks for autism proves that when communities rally families win their hockey tournaments raise local funds that support autism programming, inclusion and connection for kids and adults everywhere. Join the team that plays with purpose. Visit

pucks for autism dot com. That's pucks for autism dot com and get involved today. We very much celebrate pucks for autism and thank them and wish everybody you know if you want to support a charity or whatever you're looking for something for your company to do them in the thrive life project are great great causes. So all right everybody much appreciated and we will head out the same way that we came in.

Steve-o (01:21:18.38)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:28.236)
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.