HR at 100mph with Hunter Lott

Source: GeniusDen archive transcript checked against the recording. Administrative opening and closing material is omitted; the presentation wording is otherwise preserved with light readability edits.

Thanks for having me. HR is one of those topics that, especially startups or managers, really management at any level, just doesn’t want to deal with. I was once introduced, “Here’s Hunter Lott. He’s going to talk human remains.” One guy said, “Here’s Hunter Lott. He’s going to talk sales prevention.” We were talking a little bit about, you know, the people, and I’ve had a lot of business owners, you know, “This would be great without the people.” It’s an old line, but but you’ll be surprised as you get into this, whether you’re managing you know five people getting started, ten people, 60 people, or more, how much time it takes of just in dealing with the people.

People are different. They come to work with different backgrounds, different expectations at work. We’ve got four generations now at work, coming on five. That’s pretty much the first time we’ve had that since the old agriculture economy. You got to remember, when I started out, mandatory retirement was 65. And so My first job was an underwriter at a big insurance company, and the guy next to me had been there 28 years. Nice guy. And I said, “Harold, what’s the secret to success?” And he said, “Hide. Hide. Yeah, don’t get at the top or the bottom of any list. “I’ve got a couple of years. I’m going to retire. This is a region of about 400 employees, and most of the management will have no idea who I am. That’s the secret to success.”

And I remember thinking, I’m not good at hiding. I’m not going to be here long. And I got promoted a couple of times into management, then left to do some sales, and then kind of fell into what became an HR career, helping managers really be the best they can be in terms of managing people. So we’ll take some time, kind of talk about what’s at stake. Everybody got kind of a risk versus reward. I’m gonna have you go through that just briefly and just kind of check off in your head or on paper safe versus risky. HR is so hard if you’re linear, because we live in the gray area. We love that; it’s the fun part for HR.

Most decision-makers, “Give it to me straight. What’s the right answer?” This is kind of like driving down the interstate. You see the speed limit sign, it says 65. Some people drive 40, some people drive 80, and that’s fine. My job in HR is to help a decision-maker, tell him or her where the 65 is. Here’s the risk versus reward. You make the call. A lot of HR people are into compliance. “Oh, you gotta do this. You gotta always drive 65.” That’s not gonna happen. It’s just not real. But I want to know what’s at stake. Some crazy lawsuits, and we can certainly talk about that, but it doesn’t come down to legal.

I went back to school and got a master’s degree in employment law, and during the administrative law class, a professor threw up the slide. It showed 100,000 people in Washington, D.C., codifying the law, putting it all together, trying to make sense of the laws that are passed. 100,000 people, full-time job every day. And I said to the professor, “Why are we then in HR so crazed with compliance? You can’t do that. You can’t do that. There’s no way we can keep up, much less a small growing business owner.” And we had a discussion. Ultimately, it came down to, well, we should just try. Good news, it’s not that hard to separate ourselves.

This is not so much complicated as it is hard work. And the legal stuff, you just look at some of these cases and you realize it’s not about the rules and regulations. It’s more about better business decision-making. This was actually here in Dallas. It was bring-your-child-to-workday. What could go wrong? Mom brought 15-year-old daughter. CEO hits on 15-year-old. Mom complained. CEO fires mom. Wow. Headline: jury awards $499,000 for same-sex harassment. This company was great. I bet you never figured how much lost productivity there was in urination. That’s right. All the people that take breaks. Never calculated how much time that takes. This company says, okay, that’s it. You’re gonna have to clock out to pee. You wanna take a break, you gotta clock out.

Now any of us in HR would have been going, wait a minute. This isn’t gonna play well on TMZ. This isn’t gonna play well on 60 Minutes. Plus there’s all kinds of legal problems here. You really want, yes, they’ve got to decide their bladder or their paycheck. Oh. So of course the first day, probably the first one guy complained. Department of Labor got a hold of it and said this is violating all kinds of regulations. Let’s go to court. They go to court, the judge just yells at them. The award was $1.75 million. I doubt they saved that much money. They’re gonna appeal it. Again, I mean, you just look at these and you go, oh my gosh. This is not so much legal as it is decision-making.

So we’ll talk various issues. As you have questions, comments, if there’s some HR issue keeping you up at night as a manager, as a decision-maker, make sure you let me know. We’re not gonna save all the questions till the end necessarily. You got a question, we can deal with it. We can deal with it right away. But we’ll use it as kind of a framework, these six questions. So take a minute, go through the six questions, and check them off, safe or risky, safe or risky, safe or risky. Then we’ll talk about it. Where the rest of those sheets? People accuse me of that. These are trick questions.

“I have two employees. I can fire anyone for any reason. Texas is an at-will state.” And you know what that means. Employees can sue at will. So you’d have to prove that you didn’t use age, sex, race, religion, national origin, or disability. I’m a white guy. I said that still counts. We had a company in Georgia that fired all the Americans. Just fired all the Americans. “Terrible workers. I don’t like the white people, black people, or even the legal Hispanics. I want the illegal.” And if I only fire Americans, Americans aren’t on the list. And of course the white guys and the black guys sued and got a nice little check. Interesting. Every state in the country is at will. Even states like Arizona and California—every state in the country is at will except Montana. The burden of proof, and we’ll talk about that now.

Your numbers do help you. You’re an employer in this state. It’s, I think, it's 15 in Texas, 15 employees. So you’re under that threshold, they have to take you to court. The chances that happen are real, real slim. They can’t afford an attorney, and most of the attorneys won’t take it. There is one topic on here the attorneys will take no matter what. Now take another minute with your neighbors and compare your answers. I’ll give you a hint. There are two risky statements. How many employees do you have?

He’s got eight. Going, yeah, yeah, yeah. How many employees do you have? He’s got eight. Going, yeah, yeah, okay. A lot of merger, acquisition, buying companies, those kind of things, that all of a sudden you go from here to here. 15 is kind of the threshold at the federal government, the EEOC, 15 to 20. They’re the people that monitor the legal side. Then 50. Then 50 healthcare kicks in, the ACA, family medical leave. That all kind of blows up. So that’s a threshold where you need full-time HR just watching this stuff so you can focus on growing your business.

And then 150, you can Google Rule 150, military, civilizations, communities. After about 150, people don’t work well together. They need strong leadership. Up to 150, you might be able yeah spread all out, which makes there's some challenges there then in terms of accountability and making sure everybody’s on the same page in results, but less of this interaction. All right, let’s start about these. Number one, firing bad employees regardless of age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability. How many said safe? It is safe. Watch out for what’s called an implied contract. So if I let Joe come in late every day for a year and a half, I’ve established an implied contract that him coming in late is okay.

A lot of people say, well, don’t put anything in writing. Don’t have any, don’t have a handbook. Don’t do any of that stuff because you can’t be held accountable. Well, the attorneys will tell us no, you can be accountable based on the commitments you make, whatever you tell your employees, and certainly your past practice. And I can break the past practice, and I can break the past practice, but, “Joe, you got to start to kind of work on time.” And Joe says, “This is a deal I made with your dad.” “I realize that, but dad’s gone. Tell you what, we’ll give you the rest of the month of April. Take a couple weeks, get your personal life together,” whatever it is. “But as of May 1st, we’re going to hold you accountable to the same tardiness standard as anybody else.”

So as you kind of evolve, you go from 8 to 100, or you go remote, or whatever it is, you can make the changes you need to make. I communicate the expectations, then hold them accountable. Well, people get weird around the list. Already came up. Age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability. Texas is an at-will state. Got the right to fire at will. They have the right to sue at will. The burden of proofs on us. Prove you didn’t use the list to make a hiring or firing decision. This is why HR will be just drilling down on documentation, documentation, documentation. Well, Texas Workforce Commission, the federal government, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the states burden of proofs on us. Document.

Did you give him or her a reasonable chance to save their job, and can you prove it? EEOC last year dropped 65% of everything that came in, all the crazy discrimination claims. They looked at it, dropped it, dropped it. They’re looking for the crazies. One store, maternity store, they sell maternity clothes. Woman came in obviously pregnant, and they said, “We’re not going to hire you because you’re pregnant. You sell maternity clothes. We don’t want pregnant women. Ever been around a pregnant woman? They’re crazy people. After you’ve stabilized, then we’ll hire you.” She got them for about $375,000, rightfully so. That’s what the states, EEOC, that’s kind of what they’re looking for, are the crazies. They tend to get a lot of publicity.

The headlines, like I said, 65% of everything that went to the federal government just got dropped. EEOC last year took less than 200 cases to court. They’re looking for the crazies. Not that hard. I’m going to sit down and have a conversation. “You’re not doing your job. We need to talk about it. You’re not doing your job.” And Informal at first. I’m not going to go write things down, gotcha. I’m not going to help. Informal conversations. And then if that works, that’s great. If it doesn’t work, we get more serious. And then eventually I’m going, “Here’s final: You’ve got six weeks. There’s a performance improvement plan. We’ll meet every week for the six weeks. But as of this date, if you haven’t lived up to these expectations, you’ve chosen to leave.” Shifts the burden to the employee where it belongs.

This is something we should be good at, not comfortable with. Ever been around of somebody, maybe you were there, and took a long time, finally pulled the trigger and finally said, “You’re out,” and employees came up and said, “What took you so long?” Other times you’ve been around employees who weren’t pulling their weight, oh and finally they were gone, oh and you said, “Thank you. There’s some leadership there.” A players, the best people, want to be around other good people. And sometimes it’s just not a good match. So the termination is something that I’m not comfortable with, but something we’ve got to be good at.

So you with precedent set for employees, okay, does that apply only to the individual employee, or would, for example, Joe be able to say, “No, you’ve always let Michael be late. I assume that was okay.”

Yes. Good question. What about the precedent said here? “You always let Michael be,” and then Joe, “and then If he can be late, so can I.” Consistency is overrated as a leadership tool. Consistency is easy. Everyone’s treated the same. Everyone, everyone. Well, try that with your customers. “I’ve got good customers, bad customers. I treat them exactly the same.” You won’t last long. I will treat employees differently based on job description, length of service, based on their performance. My best people get the benefit of the doubt. You’re a great employee, you want to work at home for a couple days to do this, no problem. You, I have no idea if you’re doing any work or not, and I watch you every day. “That’s discrimination.” Yes, it is. You’re crummy. She’s great. “You can’t do that.” Sure I can.

HR a lot of times will tell you treat everyone the same, you won’t get sued, which is true. But your chances of getting sued are pretty slim. The attorneys will say treat everyone the same, you won’t get sued, which is true, but you don’t get a chance with great employees to make the exception. That’s a leadership issue. You cannot abdicate your responsibility to lead. So use the consistency where it works. Use the precedent where it works for you. But there’ll be times you’ll make exceptions. It’s the right thing to do. Just the outsider, judges, juries, all these different agencies, are going to look at the list. Did you make the decision, the exception, based on their age or their sex or their race, religion? That’s where they’re going to push. So once you cross that line, that’s where the outsider gets interested.

The quarterback makes more money than the offensive line, which is kind of weird, because if the offensive line guy falls down, the quarterback is dead. Even stranger is the left tackle makes a million dollars more than the right tackle. And so the right tackle is upset. “This isn’t fair.” It’s not supposed to be fair. Sorry, guy, you’re not as good as the left tackle. Why is the left tackle so important? Because our quarterback is right-handed. That’s the blind side. You either get good enough to be the left tackle or go work for a team that has a left-handed quarterback. Then you’ll get paid a million dollars. It’s not supposed to be fair. So use the consistency, use the precedent where it works for you, but then when it doesn’t—

I’ll give you a great example. “Tim, here’s your $5,000 bonus. We wouldn’t want anyone to know you’re an exemplary employee. See Joe? Joe’s not too bright, but he’s a happy guy. See, smiling back there. That’s what we want. Happy, stupid. Happy, stupid. That’s low maintenance. And then I don’t have to deal with them. I hate people. Don’t tell—” Oh my gosh. First, you send a message you know the difference between your great employees and your so-so. Second, it’s against the law. I grew up in business, “We do not discuss salaries at this place of work.” That was against the law back then, but now they’ve started to enforce it.

I have a right to my salary. I have a right to my wages. I can tell anyone at any time. You’ll find millennials put it on their Facebook page. I have owners tell stories about they sit around at lunch and swap electronic pay stubs, and they go nuts. I said, “Why? Isn’t Tim a great employee? Yeah. And isn’t Joe crummy? Yeah. Well then why don’t you just have the conversation?” “No, I don’t want to talk to him because if Joe finds out, then I have to talk to him, and I hate people.” I love this enforcement because this is going to force us to get better at our jobs.

Well, this is one of the reasons women’s pay are artificially low, is we kept this stuff a secret. But with that, wow. What? Yeah, it is. Okay. I Remember the list. I can’t pay women less than men for the same job, then I’m in trouble. Can’t pay white people less than the black people for the same job, then I’m in trouble. When I cross that line with the list, that’s where the outsider gets interested. But if I can justify the difference based on length of service, productivity, location, somebody brings in a book of business, I’ll start them at a higher rate of pay or more vacation than someone else, and then I’ll have the conversation.

You’ll come up to me and you’ll say, “I just found out Tim got a big bonus.” And I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail. I don’t have to. I don’t have to tell everybody. I say, “Well, how does that affect you, Joe?” “Well, it’s not fair.” “Oh, it’s eminently fair, Joe. You’re crummy. You’re paid crummy. It’s perfect. You know you’re crummy. Well, you’re on a performance improvement plan, and you’re right, it pays terrible. I don’t know how you live in the crummy pay we get it. Did you want to make more money?” “Well, yeah.” “Well, if you do what Tim does, performance, behavior, will pay what Tim makes. But until that time, shut up and get back to work.” “Oh, you can’t talk to people that way.” Crummy people I can. I don’t talk to good people that way.

Interesting. Equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal treatment. Catch that. Equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal treatment. Be consistent where it works for you, but make exceptions for extraordinary people, extraordinary circumstances. It’s when you cross over on the list, age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability, and some areas expand on the list. When you cross over on that, that’s when you start to get in trouble.

Okay, agency says, “Just guarantee to be better because because of the fact that she’s a woman,” and historically I have trend data, several companies I’ve worked for, and I’m preferential towards hiring women?

Okay, I can’t justify that with business reason. Now, I prefer not to justify that, so you will not see my face in this video that some of you will recognize. This is okay, but if there’s a scenario we’re in, I’m going to hire preferentially women because I know young, attractive women do well in this sort of role—yeah, I gotta be careful how far I go. You’re right. Nobody can tell you not to do that. How far you go with that's kind of up to you. I’d love, from an HR perspective, I’d love a blend. Hey, women are going to sell better because the people the people there are guys that can’t control themselves, so so this woman will sell 10 times more than any guy in the same job. Okay, I get that.

But you get carried away with that, then you end up with a with a workforce of just one, in terms of I got all women. And that’s, like I said, the outsider will start to get interested when you get what they technically underutilized in a protected class. I want a little bit of blend of everything the best I can, but there may be times that I pull that trigger, and that’s fine, as long as you know how the outsider is going to look at that. Hooters, fascinating. This was probably mid-’90s. Went to the federal government and said Hooters only hires these women and it’s discrimination. And so EEOC started to process this. Hooters, very clever. If you go back and you can see the paper, USA Today, full-page ad, and they dressed up this big ugly guy in the outfit.

And Very clever PR. And they said, “What’s wrong with this picture? The federal government is trying to force Hooters to hire men to be Hooters girls, jeopardizing the jobs of 13,000 female—Washington, get a grip.” And it was very pretty quickly dropped. Picked up later, and somebody will have to check on all the details because I’m thinking back. You brought it up. It’s a simple case. And the attorney got up there and basically said, “We don’t sell food. We don’t have food. I mean, we have food, but have you ever eaten at Hooters? No, no. Our food sucks. We’re about sex. That’s what we do. We don’t sell food. We sell sex. We sell sex. We sell sex.” And the jury’s going, “Sex, sex, sex, yeah, okay, okay.”

And I think “a place of vicarious sexual recreation” I think was the term the attorney came up with. Very clever. That’s why you don’t want to go to court. You never know what’s going to happen. And they go, “Oh yeah, it’s not about the food, it’s about the sex.” Well, the only way then that they can be in business is if they have the naked women. So in essence they sold themselves as a strip joint. It’s a strip joint, a model. It’s a strip joint. Now they’ve kind of evolved and said, “Oh, it has nothing to do with that. That’s sterile,” or stuff. And you see Tilted Kilt, you see other places like that, and they backed it up as a business necessity. I’ve got to be careful how far I go with that, yeah.

And then how to think, think 60 Minutes. Would you want to go on 60 Minutes and defend this action? Would you want to go on TMZ and defend your decision? They’re not always right, but they’re everywhere. So the same principle applies to gender, applies to race. You might know what I’m talking about. Say I’m going to paraphrase here. You know why a group of white people are uncomfortable having a waiter who is African American? Not because they’re racist, but because they’re uncomfortable being served by an African American waiter. Would you want to go on 60 Minutes and defend that as a business decision? It would be hard. Impossible. It might be a reasonable business decision, good for Milton and good for the economics, but no, you won’t sell it.

That’s the whole reason we have the protected classes, of saying I’m not comfortable around black people, I’m not comfortable about women, I’m not comfortable, I hate women in sports, I don’t know why they have them on there, so we just keep them out. And the law stepped in and said no, that’s not who we are as a country, so we’re not going to go there. So as much sense as you try to make economically out of it, you cross that line, you’re going to have a tough time selling it, yeah. And you’d have to sell it as a business necessity. That’s what Hooters did, and it hasn’t come up again. It would be fascinating if it came back up in court now. As a business necessity, honestly, this isn’t where you’re going to get sued. It’s the next one.

Number two. Number two is risky. Unauthorized overtime must be paid. And this can affect you even if you’re under the 15. This can affect the smallest operation. It’s just so convoluted, that Fair Labor Standards Act. You can have a policy, all overtime must be authorized, period. Working unauthorized overtime may lead to disciplinary action. But I can’t safely tell any employee, “You didn’t get that overtime authorized. We’re not paying it.” That’s a violation of the law. They can go back three years, double the damages for all current and former employees. You want to see thousands of lawsuits, and that’s what we’re seeing on wage and hour. It’s unlike the discrimination law. The Fair Labor Standards Act, the law on overtime, includes attorney’s fees. So they’re interested in this.

Employers estimates about 70% of us. Employers are out of compliance with this. We don’t pay attention to this, we don’t pay attention to this, we don’t pay attention to this. So scenario: contractor, Bob’s coming in. Knock that wall down. We’ll just track your hours. More hours of work, fine. He comes back and says 70 hours, great. The rate was 15 bucks an hour. It’s contract labor. Whoops. Are they an independent contractor?

That helps. They’re bringing their own tools. They're I just told them get it done at this time frame, in this quality. That’s okay. But I didn’t tell them how to do that. They have another source of income, other jobs. If they’re a true independent contractor, you’re okay. And you can that’s called the 1099 classification. You can look those up, alright? There’s like 19 questions. Make sure they’re true independent contractors. You can’t just make them an independent contractor.

Microsoft had perma-temps, permanent temporaries. I think they were writing code, is what they were doing. And when the project was over, they wanted all back benefits. They really didn’t want all of them. They wanted health insurance—not health insurance, stock options. And Microsoft said, “They’re independent contractors. They’re contract labor.” “Yeah, but you treated them just like employees, and you called them permanent, perma-temps.” Microsoft tried to get out, couldn’t, actually wrote them out of check to get out from under. So I’m real careful of the independent contractor status.

So if you have a schedule for you, yeah, you got an employee that’s coming in on their own, coming in early, working through lunch, staying late, just keep adding on the hours, you pay them, you pay them. Anything over 40, state of Texas, anything over 40 is going to be time and a half. Salary does not get you out of overtime. That’s another one of those old myths. “I’ll just put you on salary, and then I'll have to pay overtime.” If you have a receptionist or IT help desk—IT help desk is non-exempt, which means they’re entitled to overtime. You can put them on salary all you want.

Yeah, there’s a threshold. If you pay them, if you pay them 85,000 and they work 60 hours, they’ll take the 85,000, divide it into that 40 hours, and you’ll pay the 20 25 hours of the overtime. That IT help desk job is non-exempt of the overtime law, so they’ve got to get paid.

Can you tell us a little bit, like can you go to maybe just, I mean not the whole 19 question, but say 1099 versus hourly versus salary and kind of what the big deciding factor is—

Yeah. Actually it's the big thing is control. How much control does the employer have over the work hours, tools, all that? It’s really basically a control factor. So if you control when they come to work, they got to wear the company uniform, they got to be on your time, they got to use my tools, they get invited to the holiday party, and they can play company softball, they’re probably not an independent contractor because you’re controlling all everything, every aspect. If they have no other source of income, that adds to it, but the real big one is the control factor. How much control do you have over how they do their job?

I’m sorry, except for exempt and non-exempt.

Oh, exempt and non-exempt. Well, it’s based on job duties. So if you’re exempt, big picture on exempt, exercise discretion and judgment. Non-exempt, hourly overtime, routine-type work, accounts payable, IT help desk. Routine-type work is typically the overtime. Exempt, discretion and judgment. Now there’s 60-some-odd exemptions, like you said. You could deep dive on all these. But just for instance, the management exemption. Tim’s an executive. Work till drop, no overtime. Okay, let’s look. And you can look these up. You look up the definition of exempt executive exemption, and it says does he manage two or more full-time equivalents? He has hiring and firing influence? Yeah. Primary duty is management? Yeah. And he makes more—and here’s where the salary comes in—$455 dollars a week, about 23,000. If he’s got all four of those, work till drop, no overtime.

455?

455. It is today. There’s an executive order the president’s put in place. They’ve had the 60-day comment period. They’ve looked at 200,, 300,000 comments. Within a matter of weeks, they may decide, they may decide to move that 455 to 970 a week. It would go from 23,000 to 50,000. Now let’s talk practical. What’s that mean? If you’ve got a manager making 40,000, I’m going to have to take a hard look at this going forward because if this goes into effect, now they’ll be non-exempt, entitled to overtime. So I either bump them up to 51,000 or set a base rate and pay them the time and a half.

So one of my clients is a restaurant, and it’s got small—it’s got maybe 20 restaurants in an area, but each restaurant has a store manager. Well, the store managers are making about 35, 40. So what he’s done, he’s gone back and figured, okay, Mason usually works about 55 hours a week as a restaurant manager. So that would be 15 hours a time and a half. If we pay him $9.85 plus the 15 time and a half, he’ll make about what he’s making now. More paperwork for us, but we’re ready for it if it comes.

But wait, what if he meets all the other requirements, just not the salary one after the law?

Then they throw—then he’s all—he’s got to meet all four. He’s got to meet, yeah. He can’t just meet one of those. He’s got to meet all four of them. So if they bump it up to 970, he’ll have to manage two or more full-time equivalents, hiring and firing influence, primary duty is management, and $970 a week. Three out of four three out of four won’t do it. It’s got to be all of them. There are some, there are some very creative legal methods and fluctuating work hours and building in some of the overtime, some commission things. Talk to your tax accountant, CPA, or attorney on how to set that up, because you can do that, yeah.

And so then you’d look at maybe, remember there’s 60 exemptions, maybe they’re doing more than just IT help. They’re administrative or they’re a learned professional. There’s a computer exemption. There are 60-some-odd exemptions based on job duties. Just go Department of Labor, DOL.gov, and you can look at the fact sheets. They really got all the information. This is what happened. 2008 employees got educated. They started looking at the internet. Managers were surprised. They had no idea they had been doing it wrong. One guy asked me, “When did all this change?” 1938. But we ignored it.

So there’s four: $455, dollars two or more, and primary duty is management. Remember, that’s just the executive exemption. There’s 60 more of them based on job duties. They change the law, you’re still going to have to meet whatever it is. At this point, we don’t think they’re going to be changed a lot except that salary. So we’ll see what happens. And the new president could rescind it on the day they take office. This is a lot of play politics, which you’re going to see a lot more on the wage and hour piece. We think it comes out next month, and when it does, you’ll see all kinds of publicity and everybody's screaming on both sides about the adjustment if it happens.

Yeah, comp time or some other reward?

No, not in the private sector. Public sector, you can do comp time. You can’t give safely an hour and a half off for an hour overtime, not in the private sector. Or, you know, food or other things, safely. They’re doing two different things. They all report to the same HR, the same boss, yeah. A lot of companies try playing that, different job descriptions, different time cards. You’re going to have a tough time separating.

Question regarding non-profits. Does that apply to government contractors?

Non-profits, apply. Government contractors get a little different. You’ve got some ins and outs, and there’s like DOT regs. The Fair Labor Standards Act is a massive piece of legislation. And that’s why as you continue to grow, you want to take a hard look. Are we in compliance as best we can? Because the stakes are high. They can go back. Clear emails, you know, for two hours every night, Department of Labor will just go into your records. “Let’s see all the hourly employees that are clearing emails offline.” And they’ll start totaling up that time. Again, the time and attended software is going to help us soon. Everything will be done in the cloud, and you’ll be able to kind of control that, and the computer will know a difference on the exempt employee that logs on and the non-exempt that tries.

So you’ve got some ins and outs with some government contracts that can be different. This is the point where a lot of business owners, okay, sell the business. That’s what I’ve learned so far. Don’t sell the business, but it is going to generate a lot of publicity if it hits this summer.

The third one, having a company policy statement against harassment. This is safe. I want to go on record against it. Use your 60 Minutes, TMZ analogy. Would you want to go on 60 Minutes, TMZ, with that comment, that story, that picture, that poster, that action? They’re not always right, but they’re everywhere. So the definition of harassment, unwelcome sexual advance, creates a hostile work environment. So it doesn’t take much. So I want to go on record against it. It’s the right thing to do. There’s some legal protection, affirmative defense, by having a policy and a procedure against it.

No harassment. You can Google sexual harassment policies. Are pretty, you know, they’ll define what it is. They’ll give no retaliation for anybody that complains. Here’s the complaint procedure. “I'll Report to me, the owner, or to HR if you’ve got it. If you’re not comfortable with them, you can go to one board member.” I try to keep it pretty focused on, you know, one, two, or three. I want to make it really easy to complain. I don’t want to be surprised with this. I want to know if you’ve got a customer or client that’s harassing, sending nasty emails, inappropriate emails, pictures, whatever it is. If they’re not comfortable, I want to take prompt and appropriate action.

What about in this sort of employee fraternization, dating, that kind of—

Oh, real nice. Thanks, Joe. The dating. Careful about having policies and procedures you can’t enforce. “Employees will not date.” Ok, fine. How do you enforce that? Oh, you get on some of these that are O line. O-line bosses love that. “Yeah, no fraternization.” Ok, you have to enforce it. Well, how do you enforce it? Well, you know, we go out and follow them around, have a bed check. Well, employees can’t date. Well, what if two employees fall in love and get married? One of them has to go. Well, which one? Woman, less essential employee. Whoa, that’s sex discrimination. Well then fire Tim. Well, no, Tim is the sex too. Oh yeah, you guys decide who wants to stay and who wants to leave, and sue us.

Which is fascinating to me, because they’ll get all crazed about married, but divorced couples can manage each other, that’s no problem. Best friends, live-in, can manage each other. It’s just married people, whoa. I can have a policy on inappropriate favoritism. Somebody plays favorites and it has nothing to do with their performance or behavior, and certainly deal with that. But I’m real careful. You might have a love-and-lust policy. “in A romantic relationship that affects our ability to run our business, your ability to do your job, may be grounds for disciplinary action.” Policy should be more permissive than mandatory, which means I’m going to have to make the call.

It’s a leadership issue. One, two, three warnings before you’re fired. Yeah, but if Mason is smoking in the dynamite factory, then I’m going to have to give him three write-ups? “Oh, he didn’t blow us up the first time, but don’t do it again. Oh, he didn’t blow us up this time. Stop.” May lead to disciplinary action. But yeah, some of these policies I see are— made The dress code: “Women’s skirts will not be four inches shorter from the—four inches from the buttocks.” I called the guy up. I said, “I got a problem.” He goes, “The attorney said my handbook’s fine.” I said, “It’s not legal. It’s your dress code.” “The attorney says it’s fine.” “I want you to explain how you enforce the four inches from the buttocks. Paint a picture for me.”

He was great. He goes, “Sarcasm, right?” I go— And then he started saying, “I didn’t know that was in there.” Yeah, you look at some of the policies that maybe you’ve inherited for 30 years, or you just, as you started your business, you just grabbed, “Oh yeah, I remember that. I just grabbed this one off the internet.” But then can I really enforce this? What difference does it make in terms of the job? Is this—my name’s on the door, it’s my company—is this what I want to do? I got to be careful how I enforce it. So it’s not so much the policy itself, but the enforcement, yeah.

These no-dating policies, one of my favorites. My favorites when they say turn them in. You’re having an affair with someone, so you can imagine going to HR, “Okay, I’m having an affair with Anna,” you know, and then cross her off, and Charlotte’s next, and Tim’s kind of cute, so put him on the list. Oh my gosh. Oh But one company required that anyone you’ve ever dated that’s a co-worker, you send a list in. And that's just that’s just babysitting. No leadership there at all. But you still see way too much of that. It’s not like a fetish thing. One company, exposed female heel was pornographic. Women could not expose her heel at work. So sometimes you do get to wonder, whoa, where is this coming from?

What about policies towards transgender workers? What—what yeah, we’re developing you know kind of those now and how we manage that.

Some states have, you seen the publicity on transgender, it's kind of stepped in and trying to set guidelines. Be interesting to see how they enforce those. You’ll see a lot, like here, you’ll see a restroom with men and women on it, and, you know, singles, or you just go in, and you know how many of us in our lifetime haven’t shared a restroom with somebody? So this is going to be interesting how employers kind of deal with this. Most of them, you go to Australia or New Zealand and the entire country is a bathroom. Yeah, we have an issue with it in America. Yeah, we everybody just we yeah we just get crazy. I know in Arizona they tried to pass a law that said transgender people couldn’t use the public restroom. I was like, really? They finally figured out they couldn’t enforce it.

So what I try to do there is I treat it like I do my other policies, equal opportunity. I’m going to make accommodations sometimes if I have to, but I try to stay calm with a little common sense. How the law is going to break down, it’s too new to tell, really.

So what do you do with the religion?

Um Yep. And you just reasonable accommodation up to undue hardship. So the question, what do you do with the religious practice that you need to accommodate? Reasonable accommodation up to undue hardship. So am I going to make the accommodation? Yes, up to the point of undue hardship. What’s undue hardship? Think 60 Minutes. Think TMZ. So if they’re requiring me to build a $3 million dollar prayer room, no, probably not going to happen in small business. But the ability to pray four times a day, fine. Am I going to go crazy with that? No. Am I going to start counting or timing? No.

If someone starts to abuse whatever that privilege is, then I’ll take prompt and appropriate action. So religion, by definition, reasonable accommodation up to undue hardship. So we’re drifting, but this does beg the question. Smokers and smoke breaks. Ah, smokers aren’t protected. They’re not on the list. So no smoke breaks or no smokers? Well, are you concerned about excessive breaks? Yes, yes. Then have an excessive break policy. “You may break once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and you have your lunch. Good. That’s it.” So the smokers come up. He says no. You get no more breaks than anyone else. Or I say to everybody, any time a smoker goes on break, you can go on break too. Woo. Wow.

Yeah, a lot of people will go after smoking. I don’t really go after—some states smokers are protected, tobacco states. But most areas, it’s smoking. No smoking on campus, no smoking on campus, as long as you’re willing to enforce it. That’s an enforcement issue. One company tried that. No smoking in any company, while doing company business, any company vehicle, on any company property, even including the company-owned parking lot. And they hired little rent-a-cops. Didn’t last real long because it got to be crazed. It was like high school. They would run back by the pipe or something.

But I can certainly look at smoking. Actually the ACA may give us some more help as we start to emphasize more and more healthy, saying, okay, you can do that, but we’re going to ding you X number of dollars deductible, or your health insurance, it’s going to cost a couple hundred dollars a month. So that’ll be interesting to see this wellness issue make that shift.

So you should put that in the handbook?

The more you can, you can communicate those things, you’ll consistently enforce, for the most part, yeah. The more that that handbook can be kind of help to you.

What about the people who keep that thing with them?

No, you can eliminate all smoking products. Most of my clients, if they go smoking, smoke smoking, vaping, so the electronic cigarette they don’t allow, or any chewing tobacco, no spittoon. Or I love the clear Mason jar. No, no. And you’re the owner. You don’t have to put up with that. If they want to do that, they have to do it somewhere else, yeah.

How do they classify, what do they call it, recreational use of a legal product?

So if you’re in a tobacco state, you’re not going to go after smoke. Recreational use of a legal product. Smoking is perfectly legal, like a car.

That’s what they were—yeah, yeah, and I can’t fire you for class stuff. I drive a car.

No, no, no, no. Smokers are not in most states protected. In those states, I know, but they are, that’s how they define it, yep. If you’re a smoker—no, but my car is a legal product. I drive a car, therefore I’m a protected—

Nope. Car is not protected. The smoker is in that state. The car is not a legal product—yep, it’s okay. The car is not a legal product in that state. Smoking is, okay. So what do you use? You say any tobacco tobacco products or vaping, electronic cigarettes.

On that question, right, we’re based in Colorado.

Okay. This is like stump the band. Joe was great. Joe goes, “I don’t think we’ll get a whole lot of questions.” I don’t know. I don’t know. Okay. Legal in the state, but still totally illegal. Yes. How is that issue? It’s fascinating. Which network was it? The Dish Network. And the guy came up on a random drug screen and he popped it, and they fired him. And so they challenged it. And the attorney was great. The attorney says, “We know we’re going to lose, but we’re going to push the envelope.” The company very quickly got it out of the state courts to the federal courts. Federal courts don’t honor marijuana as being legal. So boy, the firing stood.

Remember, bad management is not illegal. Was it was it Anna? “You’re irresistibly beautiful, irresistibly beautiful. I cannot resist you. Every time I see you at work, my heart’s—in my heart. I brought my wife in here and my pastor holding me back. You’ve worked with me for 10 years, but you’re fired for being irresistibly beautiful.” I So she sues, wrongful termination. The court looked at it, said age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability, irresistibly beautiful, it’s not on the list. So the firing stood. Went to the Supreme Court, state of Iowa, and they affirmed the lower court. They said we don’t like what the employer did, but it’s not against the law. Bad management isn’t necessarily against the law. That’s why it’s important, especially as you keep growing, to understand the outsider looks: age, sex, race, religion, national origin, disability.

That's what the dentist That was the dentist, why?

Yep, yeah, yeah. Woo. You’re gonna do what your wife said. Oh my gosh. I know. And he went on 60 Minutes, didn’t look real good, yeah.

Buying an alcoholic for drinking whiskey on the job. Look at, look at this. Look at this. I would say safe, and you’re right, it is safe. If you catch them on the job. If you catch them on the job. Not a whole lot of protection.

What if they’re using cell phones?

Cell phones? What do you mean?

Once they get told them that they’re not.

Take your phone—what would it work? What if you can you can—

You can certainly fire them for using their cell phone at work. Everybody, 65 people, they’re all carrying phones. Your company, fire them all? Okay, yeah, I know. That’s where you kind of go, yes, I can do that, but probably not a good idea. I know, yeah. And that’s why you’re real careful before you start that. Go, wait a minute. Would I fire my top sales person for using his cell phone? Probably not. Well, once I start this, it’s real hard to stop. So get over it. Are they doing their job? What do you care if they’re on their phone as long as they’re doing their job?

Well, I have heavy machinery.

If I’m not a safety issue, then you can certainly—but you gotta be willing to enforce it. Otherwise, as long as they’re doing their job, I don’t care what they’re doing. Now again, this is all easy for me to say. It’s not my company. You know, I’ll be gone. I’ll be in Fort Myers tomorrow. I won’t be any help to you. So real careful. “Can I fire so-and-so for their cell phone?” Yes. Or are you willing to fire everybody else for their cell phone? Yeah, I’m gonna have to. I could differentiate based on job description. I mean, there’s ways to set that up. My sales force can use the cell phone whenever they want. They can come in whenever they want. I don’t care if I ever see them as long as they sell. My customer service people have to be here at 8 and can’t leave until 4. My warehouse guys, because the safety issues, they can’t drive the forklift and use their phone.

So I can, as long as I can differentiate that way and sell the concept.

So at what point do you you just get to the point where you say, okay, I can’t make a policy for everything. I can't Why doesn’t it just make more sense to have one rule that says you’re gonna have an expected amount of value you need to add to this company. If you don’t add that, then you’re either gonna reduce your pay and—

That’s okay, and that’s okay, you can do that. The problem becomes what if they’re miserable, grumpy, whining and complaining. They do their job, they produce, but they’re miserable human beings. That then becomes behavior, not attitude. Get out—great nugget here—get out of the word attitude. It’s too subjective. Go behavior. So you walk in a restaurant, very successful. This woman’s doing her job, and she yells at you when you walk in, “give a reservation, give a reservation. Are all these tables spoken for? Next time get a reservation.” She does her job well. She's

I mean She’s making customers—

Yeah, see, and there’s where the line is. Does her behavior affect her performance? Your accounting people are gonna be grumpy. You don’t want happy-go-lucky accountants. The IT guys are gonna be weird little dudes, and that’s okay. So the behavior you put up with from IT, totally different than the front desk receptionist because it becomes part of their job. So the one rule, Nordstrom’s tried that, you know, to do the best you can, do the best for the customer. But business isn’t that simple usually. You can start out that way, it’s a great value, but you’re gonna get people that start to go ding over here.

Do you think that it’s deficient from a business perspective or deficient from a legal protection?

No, not so much from legal, but it just—you’ll outgrow it. You won’t be able to do it, yeah. You won’t be able to do it. You’ll outgrow it because people get too convoluted.

Audience question, partially unclear: “What if, let’s say, Joe is much nicer and also does his job competently, but I’m an asshole and I don’t—”

Yeah, that’s behavior. Then I get—I don’t worry about the cause so much as the results. You’re mean and nasty. I don’t care what the situation is. You’re fired. Mean and nasty—fired. If you’re a happy, productive drunk, it’s okay. Yeah, yeah. It’s your top salesperson. That’s one of those leadership issues. If they’re driving the forklift truck, I can’t have the guy that’s intoxicated or buzzed, driving the forklift truck. But it’s a management decision that you’re called on to make.

How do you send a drunk home when he’s drunk on the job?

You If he’s drunk on the job, you catch him drinking on the job, take his keys if you can, if he’ll give you the keys, or she. Make arrangements from home. Don’t let him drive. Think 60 Minutes. Oh yeah, you’re impaired, so drive home and to get an accident the way home, you’re responsible, company’s responsible. At the holiday party, you serve the alcohol, you’re responsible, period.

If you hear from a lady, how convinced are you? You hear rumors. “Well, Mason went to lunch and put down the three martinis,” the old three-martini lunch. How convinced are you that happened? On a scale of one to ten. I need to go over there and smell? No, no, yeah. And you’re gonna go consistently smell everyone if they come back from lunch? No. Are you a designated sniffer? No. How convinced are you? Is this a surprise when you hear it about Mason? Does Mason drive the forklift truck? Yes. What if you think he’s drunk, but then he juggles for you? He juggles for you. Yeah, see, it I’ve gotta be careful. It’s his decision-making.

If they’re happy productive drunk and they’re my sales force and they’re not driving, they’re just customer service, but she’s so happy, she’s a little buzzed, but she’s happy, the biggest exposure, she falls down. Totally different than the forklift truck driver or my sales guy man or woman that’s out with the company car. And those are individual decisions you’ve gotta make. If you catch them drinking at the job, not a whole lot of protection from the Americans with Disabilities Act. But if they come and say, “I need a day off at Betty Ford Clinic, a month for rehab,” then reasonable accommodation up to undue hardship. But that’s a behavior issue.

Great nugget here: get out of attitude, go behavior. I’ll hire for behavior. Much easier to train for the performance. I don’t commit to hiring best qualified for a job. I commit best matched. Somebody on paper can look great, then you get them in and they drive all your good people out. And then they look at us, do something about it, yeah.

They’re drinking under the table, you tried—you had Uber out there, you had drink tickets. It’s hard to eliminate your liability. You can mitigate it, though, show some good-faith effort. You try to do everything you can. If you’ve got the most money, they hit your kid or grandkid, you’ve got the biggest risk at stake. So I’m real careful. That’s why HR people go nuts on the alcohol. They’re just like, wow, look at the exposure we’ve got.

So are you exposed on their commute home at the end of the workday?

Oh sure, why not? You provided the alcohol.

No, no. I’m talking about you didn’t provide it. They’re just drinking under the table or something.

Did you know they were drinking under the table?

Oh, as soon as you caught him, you told him to leave, and you told him to leave, and he drove home, yeah. Then he hits the kid. Nope, they’re not going to sue—I mean, they’re going to go after him, but he doesn’t have any money. Who’s got the money? So that’s where you say I’m going to get a car for you, I’m going to do this. And if he gets away from you, call the cops. Then it’s recorded. It’s the old real—actually it’s digital now, most of them. Then you can show good faith effort. Hard to eliminate, but I can really mitigate. Big difference between doing that and having the chug-a-lug contest at the holiday party.

Why is it so hard for companies when it comes to the behavior issue regarding the employee who drinks, the employee doesn’t take a bath? They don’t want to address it. They just let it be. They hope that they just die out.

We don’t like people. I don’t want to have that conversation. We just don’t. At any level. I get this from CEOs, I get front-line supervisors. I don’t want to have the conversation. Why don’t we have the conversation about poor performance, poor behavior, you smell, you’re not doing your job, you’re miserable, grumpy, whiny, complaining. Why don’t we just have an adult conversation, please? And we don’t. We wait till we finally lose our patience, and then we fire for some stupid reason. Then we’re surprised and we get sued. I don’t know. One guy had 40 employees for 40 years. He said he had been a problem for 20, the last 20 years, and they refused to deal with it.

Sometimes it’s relatives. Sometimes it’s somebody, a friend, the kids grew up. My experience has been they blame the law. It’s something emotional. They just don’t want to do it. Or, this was dad’s favorite employee. Okay, but what’s happening is A players know the difference, and they said if you’re going to put up with that, I’m leaving. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to work for someone that appreciates the good work I do.

Testing out new employees, the probationary period. Get rid of these probationary periods. Can’t help you. You put the at-will relationship in play. Now we’re here in Texas. I’m not as concerned as I would be if I was in California or in New England. But this is, again, because we don’t want to have the conversation. We hate to interview. Most of you, if you ever had a job somewhere, got hired because you just wore them out. “Okay, you’re hired.” Why? “I’m tired. I don’t want to interview anybody else. I want to go to the lake. I’ll fix you. I’ll change you later.”

There’s no magic. Probationary employees in every state but Montana, the same rights to sue as anybody else. This is kind of a lazy way to get somebody on board. Then you go screaming to them at day 89 of the 90-day probationary period, “You gotta fire Tim. You gotta fire Tim.” And then what’s HR say? “Where’s your documentation? Where’s your documentation?” “Don’t make me do that. I’ll go over your head. I’ll go to big Joe. Big Joe will let me fire him.” No. I’m not gonna go there. I don’t need to. Oh, that’s my phone. Bad speaker. Oh, my apologies. I didn’t turn it off.

So here, the probationary period buys no protection. I want that thing out of here. I can review someone at 30, 60, 90 if I want to, but I’m not gonna make any commitment to the 90-day orientation period or probationary period.

What about working interview?

Well, as long as you pay them, okay. So you can do a month working interview, yeah. They’ve been around a long time. You just don’t go—everybody thinks like Google, oof, you know, internship, no pay, just, we can work them to death, work them to death, but not pay them. You know, the internship’s real tough to pull off if it doesn’t have some kind of college credit attached to it, yeah. Companies are getting burned with that one. So be real careful there. I can’t work people for free. If it’s mine, you want to have a working interview for a day or two days, then I’ll pay a minimum wage during that time. Can’t work people for free. It’s okay, yeah, yeah, that’s fine.

No probationary period. There’s no reason for it. You can’t justify it. Why do you have it? So after 90 days you won’t check them out? So did you have—you don’t call it anything. You said, “You’re on probation for as long as you work for us.” Okay, I can fire you anytime I want to. You can quit anytime you want to. So from one day to 40 years. So in essence I want them on probation forever, and the way to do that, get rid of your probationary period.

So what about these communities and startup communities that are accelerators, incubators, ambassadors, yeah?

Happy people don’t sue. And uh so you can come in and do free stuff. Happy people don’t sue. Most attorneys will tell you, hey, you know, big-picture thing, you’re gonna make some of those kind of decisions, and that’s fine. Just don’t make it a general practice that I want people in here for six weeks to work them into the ground and not pay them and then let them go. That’s where you’ll get in trouble. So if I can, I do, rather than hiring a contractor relationship for, say, I want you to come in for a month on X project. Sure, as okay. Yeah, let’s strike a deal for a month. We’ve got this one project. We’re gonna let you run with it. We’ll put you as an employee or a temp, or we can actually make a deal with the temp agency. Go register at this agency. Then they take care of all the paperwork. We’ll pay a little bit more premium for it, but with everybody understanding, adult conversation, we’re gonna look at this for three days.

I think where he was going was that free thing, that ambassador—

Nope, careful about free.

Where were you going with that?

I was actually—you were going with that one.

I’m actually going with if I’m trying to hire someone, I don’t want them to come on, but I have two employees who matter a lot to me. Their opinions matter a lot to me. If this guy gets in, who I think is perfect interview, and they hate him and they’re willing to leave—

There’s the behavior piece. That’s right. Especially small companies. I don’t want to throw off the balance. I got a great group going. I don’t want to mess it up. That I’m not sure what’s going to happen here, and sometimes it’s really hard in the interview. So I may strike these kind of deals either through a temp agency or my own. Have legal counsel look at that. In the case of what Joe’s asking, if I structure it as, rather than an employee relationship, a volunteer [unclear], yeah. And those are hard to pull off safely.

If I’m a non-profit, is it easier?

Happy people don’t sue. Thank you, thank you.

Rejecting an applicant for having a bad attitude, and I gave this one away, this one is safe. But out of attitude, stop with the attitude, go behavior, behavior, behavior. Interview for behavior. If they’re miserable and grumpy in the interview, wait until you put them on payroll. Much easier to fix a performance issue. And just as Mason said, “I got two great guys. I want to make sure the third one will work well, play well in the sandbox.” Sometimes I really can’t tell until I put them on the job for a while. And so on those kind of issues, then you’re just saying we’re going to go this way.

One survey showed 82% CEOs who fail, number one reason they fail, hiring the wrong person in the wrong position, and then refusing to deal with them. As Tim said, refusing to have the conversation. 82 CEOs that fail, number one reason, wrong person and not dealing with them. You can tell I could just keep going. Any other questions?

Or So in a retail setting, going back to number five, if you say up front in the interview that, say, the first week and a half to two weeks of training is a probationary test-out period, at the end of your training we will evaluate and offer you a permanent position, is that—

Yeah, better solution? Well, you’ve then sacrificed your right to fire them at will ever again.

How so?

They’ll say, “Did you have a heightened sense of job security after you successfully completed your probationary period?” “Oh yeah.” So it negates the at-will relationship in your case after two weeks. I don’t need to do that. Just tell same same. Keep the same tone and behavior. “We’re going to be watching it pretty closely initially.” “When do I get my first raise?” “When you’ve earned it.” Oh, you’ve had some people—oh, you’ll meet this guy. He got a raise in 30 days. He was so good. Other people never ever got a raise. You won’t meet them. They’re not here. So which are you? “How will I know?” “Talk to your supervisor.”

So so you can still communicate expectations. Just don’t get hung up with the time frame, and drop the word permanent. Temp-to-perm, temp-to-regular, temp-to-regular. Think like a crazy HR person. We think very literal. Good news, we’re in Texas. You won’t have that kind of pressure. Employment law typically starts East Coast, West Coast, works its way, and then gets to Texas. So it’s pretty much worked out, and that’s good news if you’re starting this. Is a Yeah, this is a great state to start a business, a great state to start a business. It’s crazy, some of this regulations now. It’s a great state to start a business, yeah. And the economic experts will say one of the best, if not the best, in the country.

So if you’re actually hiring 299 employees across the country, remote, probably won’t ever see them, maybe once a year, something like that, what things you should think of when you’re looking at hiring this person?

As you hire remotely, make sure that you have an accountability piece, that you know what a good employee looks like, the results of what your expectations are. So set that up front. “I would expect to see this. This is what I”—so that I have some way of judging, because I can’t watch them everyday. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I can certainly see the results. But I’ve got to have that set up first. If it’s sales, it’s pretty easy. Other jobs are a little tougher, but you can still quantify it.

This is what I mean. We hired a church leader, youth leader, recently, and we set results. We thought backwards. How will we know when when he’s being successful? When the kids are dragging their parents to church, when other churches are calling us up and saying, “We want to be part of your youth program,” and just the sheer numbers. And so that, that that’s his target. How he gets there, is a lot of flexibility, but that’s how we’ll know when we go to evaluate at the end of the year, are we anywhere close? Tougher remotely because you’re not there, but I want to be very clear up front. These are the performance and behavior expectations I have for each location. Hey, I appreciate the time. I’ll be around to answer individual questions. All right, let’s call this one an end so people can go if they need to. All right, thank you very much.