Rails Optional

About Rails Optional

Rails Optional is what happens when two neurodivergent former HR pros stop pretending corporate made sense and start building something better, out loud. We’re Nicole and Deb—both in corporate recovery, both allergic to bullshit, and both deeply curious about how work, brains, and systems could function if they weren’t quietly draining the life out of everyone. We talk corporate recovery, ADHD entrepreneurship, AI that doesn’t suck, and how to build a life and business that don’t drain you—one tangent at a time. Expect sharp systems thinking and “oh god, same” stories from people who’ve seen behind the corporate curtain and are done pretending the emperor has clothes. We go deep, we go sideways, and we’re absolutely fine with both. This isn’t another “everything is broken, lol” late-stage capitalism podcast. It’s a slightly feral corner of the internet where we’re allowed to be brilliant and ridiculous in the same breath, where we say the quiet parts out loud, and where “stop pretending corporate made sense” is the starting point, not the punchline. Whether we make you nod along, rage-text a friend, or finally exhale because someone is naming what you’ve been living, you’ll have a reaction—and that’s exactly where the magic happens. railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Deb Haas & Nicole Eisdorfer

Category

comedy · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

10 Jan 2026

Latest episode

17 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

9 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Jun 2026

   Season 1, Episode 9

   Episode 9 of season 1, Deb and I talked through process, tech, data and culture debt and how culture isn't just the result of process, tech and data debt - but also something that itself makes it harder to see and address the debt. There's a fairy tale, there's actually shockingly few rabbit holes. There's a solid takedown of Workday because who really likes Workday?corporate fairy tale shared in full here: https://open.substack.com/pub/railsoptional/p/a-corporate-transformation-fairy?r=56z5sz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true (https://open.substack.com/pub/railsoptional/p/a-corporate-transformation-fairy?r=56z5sz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   18 May 2026

   Rails Optional Live Ep. 8: Unlearning

   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   24 Apr 2026

   Rails Optional Ep. 7: Curiosity Didn't Kill The Cat

   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   15 Apr 2026

   Rails Optional Episode 6: CEOs exit, stage left

   This is the first (and so far only) rails optional episode where we’ve left the entirety in from beginning to end, including the chatter. No intro, no theme music, just us, talking and hanging out with our friends. The rails are optional and we don’t follow fake rules. Like most of our episodes ideas it started with an article that sounded interesting and we just sort of followed threads, I did some research in advance, Deb brought her experience and we talked. Some people chimed in through the chat (we LOVE it when people are in the chat!!) and we just went where the spirit took us. We normally cut out the post episode chatter, but every once in a while it’s nice to break the rules. This simpler format (with the beginning and ending trimmed a bit) is our plan for the next several episodes. We are learning and experimenting and we love that you’re here for the journey with us! Thank you to everyone who tuned in live, subscribe so you get the calendar invites for the next one!btw yes, yes I DID dig through 8 months of chats to find the tiktoks I was talking about: https://www.tiktok.com/@disneyparkington/video/7557084187237354783?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7546661028311877150 (https://www.tiktok.com/@disneyparkington/video/7557084187237354783?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7546661028311877150) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   27 Mar 2026

   Rails Optional Episode 5: The Future is Bought

   In Episode 5, Deb and I follow the money through the HR conference ecosystem — Transform, UNLEASH, SHRM, ATD, the whole alphabet soup — and ask a question that turns out to be more interesting than it should have to be: when the future of work gets defined on a stage, who paid for that stage, and what do they need the future to look like? We also get into why HR keeps being handed finance’s ruler and told to measure things that don’t have length, what IO psychology has to do with any of this, and why the most valuable thing at any conference has nothing to do with the speakers. There are also Yeti coolers and Monopoly. We film these live, make a few minor edits. Today’s episode includes a few pieces of the chatter after we thought we were done but kept hanging out for twenty minutes. As always, the rails are optional.Quick note: when I referenced YETI I had VC on the brain, but they were bought by PE (which creates the same dynamics, sometimes even more aggressive, so my point still stands) but wanted to call that out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   25 Feb 2026

   Rails Optional Ep. 3 - The Sorting Hat

   If you're interested in the VIA character strengths you can take that assessment free at: https://www.viacharacter.org (https://www.viacharacter.org)Also The Good Project has the values sort I was talking about: https://www.thegoodproject.org/value-sort (https://www.thegoodproject.org/value-sort).....and if you're a woman over 40 and you're looking for a fun way to explore AI and learn without pressure or shame, I HIGHLY recommend Deb's Joy Prompt Club, you can sign up at www.joypromptclub.com. It's hosted on the Heartbeat App. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   3 Feb 2026

   Rails Optional Episode 2

   In episode 2 of Rails Optional, we start with the HR trends decks everyone’s waving around right now and ask what they actually say about trust, leadership, and how wrecked the social contract at work has become. We unpack Edelman’s trust numbers, “the great stay,” and the new top drivers of engagement, then tie it to how AI is being dropped onto haunted‑house systems, bad data, and years of underinvestment in the infrastructure HR has begged for. From cheating‑spouse energy in employer behavior to moral injury, Sunday dread, and managers quietly siding with their teams, we map the lived reality underneath the glossy reports.What do you think, are community and cooperative small businesses the future of the economy? Or are we going to have more of the same bureaucratic, hierarchical gigantic scale at all costs corporations and is that just the future we all have to look forward to? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   12 Jan 2026

   HR Is Not Your Friend

   We recorded this live today, January 12, 2026…..and as predicted, the tech is going to take a minute to get used to. I (Nicole) managed to record this on my primary substack (Truer Words) but I want it archived here where it belongs. Long story short, I loaded the live into Descript, cut out the very beginning “is there an echo on our mic” portion and the ending chit chat (guess it’s a bonus for those who were live and boy did the rest of you miss out!) and then added in a quick intro/summary and the awesome theme song Deb made last month and here you go. Thank you for those who joined us live, and for those who couldn’t, we hope you enjoy the recording. We look forward to next time! Let us know if there’s something you would like us to use as our initial topic, just remember, the rails are optional ;)Transcript:Rails Optional Episode 1 with Intro [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to Rails Optional. I’m Nicole, and today I recorded with my friend Deb Huss, and we absolutely did not stay on the rails As promised, we started with HR is not your friend, and then we dropped live chickens out of airplanes to explain why change management is broken and discovered that Swedish food names sound unfortunate in English and debated whether y’all is actually the most inclusive word in the English language, and somehow ended up on tater tot casserole. Somewhere in there. We also covered the last 20 years of how HR became a strategic business partner, right when unions collapsed. What it actually means when your job is to overcome resistance instead of listen to it, and why being strategic often translates to cost playing as the CEO when you absolutely did not sign up for that. We talked about moral injury, self betrayal, burnout, which I [00:01:00] think is a phrase I made up, but who knows? And the exact moment when you realize the seat at the table cost you so much more than you thought. There’s also a thing about HR getting their revenge through 3D printed chicken, which made more sense in context. This is what happens when two A DHD entrepreneurs in corporate recovery decide that the rails, in fact, are optional. Let’s go. We still believe in the reason we started Let We Love Behind. Hello everyone. Welcome to Rails optional. I’m Nicole and my friend. Purple. Over here is Deb. Hi. I are incredibly glad you’re here, especially those of you who are going to join us live. This whole thing is an experiment, so you get to watch it happen [00:02:00] in real time. So you know if the tech breaks or we go on a tangent about an Arby’s slogan from 2003, you were here for it. You didn’t miss a thing because you don’t miss a thing, didn’t miss a thing. All right, so quick intros. I am the founder of Truer Words. I help leaders whose transformations keep. Failing and whose dashboards tell them sweet little lies. How to find their policies, metrics and workflows that are blocking execution. Deb has a much cooler reminder. Oh my God. Tell me, tell me sweet little lies. That’s your fault. You put that in my head. Um, hey everyone, my name is Deb Haas. I’m a 56-year-old former corporate executive, uh, luring in public, building a business in public where I train women 40 plus to make AI their, can you tell I haven’t taken my drugs today, or at least I waited too long to take my drugs. This, [00:03:00] by the way, is why we’re doing this together. So between the two of us, we’ve got over 30 years in HR and HR adjacent worlds. We might actually have closer to 40 years, but we’ll just wanna talk about that. We’re being very kind to me there, Nicole. This is, we realize this being very kind to Deb. You’re elder as well. That’s all I have to say. You’re not that much elder over me, but Okay. We’ll, uh, we’ll count it. I mean, I, so I’m the oldest grandchild in my family, and I’m older than my next oldest cousin by three whole months, not even, because his birthday is the 4th of August and mine is the 9th of May. And I spent our entire childhood, um, holding those three months over his head and telling him he wasn’t allowed to talk back to his elders. So, I guess, I guess your couple of years passed me counts. You don’t. And so my, so I’m adopted, right? Hey, [00:04:00] everyone. Um, I, I, I’m adopted and it just turns out that one of my cousins was born three days literally before me. I was adopted when I was three months old. What ended up happening was that he was a great grandchild of my grandparents. I was a grandchild and there was one Christmas where the grandchildren got, I think it was like 20 bucks or 25 bucks, and the great grandchildren only got five bucks. So he was three days older than me holding his $5 bill going, why’d you get all that money? And of course they tried to explain it to him and it was, it was a cluster. So anyways, there we go. All right, so for those of you who don’t know, which I don’t think is anyone in the chat so far, but you know, maybe we’ll pick up some new people. Um, we are both A DHD entrepreneurs in corporate recovery, which means this podcast has a topic and is going to wander. And that’s the exact point. We have both been guests on podcasts multiple [00:05:00] times, and the, the comment that we always hear both on our own and on other people is it’s not just us. Oh, let’s try to keep it on the rails. And so I messaged Deb after listening to one of ‘em and I was like, we need to start a podcast and we just need to call it Rails Optional. And I immediately felt chills up and down my spine and I was like, once again, Nicole is seeing the future. Deb, I just realized that you like that Substack life has the same functionality that some of the other like butter in. ‘cause you held your thumb up in a little like thumb up, like things another, oh my gosh, there’s fireworks. How did you do that? It’s my look it. Look it. We’re gonna have balloons here in just a second. S okay. Deb has magic in her tech and I get nothing. This is some garbage. I got honey and if I’m really sad it’ll rain. Okay, so now I know what the next subject of our next call is gonna be. Okay. So format simple. We are gonna start with something in corporate life that you know is [00:06:00] weirdly complicated. HR. Work in general, systems, ai, implementation, transformation, all of those invisible rules we are apparently supposed to follow without asking questions. And we’ll follow the thread wherever it goes. So it’s gonna be shaped by what shows up in chat, what stories people bring. Deb, what are you trying to make your thing do? I was doing voguing. I was voguing. ‘cause you were saying, oh, corporate. I, it’s just the way that my brain works. You know, this, I, I just thought you were trying to get more like cool background effects. I was, I was really jealous for a second. All right, so today’s topic, we’re starting with this phrase that is now so deeply ingrained in our culture that if you say the word hr, hr, the next phrase that shows up is, is not your friend. Yes. So, I mean, like, there are, there are actual memes. I can’t believe HR is like on the. On the cool side. Is it cool to be made a meme of, I don’t know, but I, you know, [00:07:00] maybe, I don’t know. I cool to be hated possibly. She got the peanuts right? I I, I, I definitely signed up for all of that education just to be hated. That was, that was totally my intent. I was like, cool. Please hate me. I don’t, I was so clueless. I had no idea. I literally just stumbled into hr. I started out, I graduated from college. I graduated from St. Ola College in Northfield, Minnesota. Yeah. If you watch the Golden Girls, you heard Rose refer to St. Olaf. That’s what she’s talking about. But it’s an actual college. It’s a liberal arts college in, uh, Northfield, Minnesota. There, don’t you know? And, uh, I graduated with a degree in English and Latin, and of course this was at a time when that’s useful. Yeah, so useful. And, uh, I couldn’t get a job to save my fricking life. This was when downsize, God, I’m giving my age away here. This is when downsizing was first introduced into. Vocabulary. Uh, so we’re talking early, early nineties and couldn’t get a job to save my life. So exec, I ended up as an executive assistant at what [00:08:00] was then Anderson Consulting for, was then an associate partner who, by the way, is still out there. I’m not gonna say her name. Yep, they are. Yep. She’s still out there. And she’s a and yeah. So, yeah, so, you know, I, and then, and I was like, oh, here’s a job in HR that sounds fancier. It’ll pay me more than I’m making. Why don’t I do that? I like humans. Okay, so HR is not your friend, right? That’s the topic. We’re both HR people, um, we’re both HR people who have been personally insulted and said like, but wait, I wanna be your friend. And then actually looked at our jobs and been like, oh, oh, yeah. Now I see why we’re out here. I I, I can’t, I can’t be your friend. What do you remember? Do you remember the first time you had that, that realization, Deb? Like do you remember like where you were and what you were doing and like the first time you were like, oh, so Nicole, here’s the deal. I’m one of those [00:09:00] people, my friends are always telling me, they’re like, you know, for being such a smart person, you can be really fricking clueless. And so I’m like that. People are always telling me you’re like the absentminded professor. So I can’t remember exactly the first time it happened, but I do remember one of the times when it like really struck me was I was taking a design thinking course and I was really excited because I was in globally strong. We never got budget to do anything. And I got clearance to attend this in-person design thinking, like learning, design thinking. I was like, yeah, because I’d been doing virtual design thinking for a while and I was talking to the lead guy and he was really cool. We were having this great conversation. He is like, oh, by the way, what part are you in? And I’d be like, oh, I’m in hr. And he was like. And, and like, the look on his face was like, you’re, you are in hr. Like, he couldn’t comprehend that I was actually in hr, and I’m like, yeah, I’m in hr, I’m in global hr. He’s like, I, and like, that was like my first, this was like 20 17, 20 18. Um, so I must have been just happily doing my [00:10:00] thing and, and not realizing that was, and then I started showing up at things. And every time, every time someone said, oh, no, HR is here. I’d be like, what? What? I was so confused. I did not get it. I’m clueless. Nicole, what can I tell you? Totally clueless. I did some research because I, I, I wanted to, of course I did some research, right? Like that kind of what I do. So I wanted to see where this started, like when did this start and what else was going on at the same time? Like, how did we get here? Right? Yeah. HR is not our friend. So late eighties, early nineties, we start to see. HR shift from being labeled personnel to being human resource management. Right. So now that this is the intro of the strategic language, but the big, big shift for HR was in the late nineties, early two thousands. And I think, I’m terrible with names, but I think his name was Ulrich. Maybe it was Utrecht. I don’t think so. I think that’s an architecture firm. But anyways, I’m, I’m terrified in town in the Netherlands with, [00:11:00] but that’s a whole nother thing. Yeah. Something with a u and it, and it sounds European and there’s a T in an R in there somewhere. Maybe potentially. I don’t know his name. Could be Ursula and I, I would have just as much chance of her actually. I would influence. See, that’s why I would remember it. Um, anyhow, it starts with a u I’m nearly certain it probably doesn’t just have a prominent U in it. So, uh, this guy, super smart guy is like, okay, so here’s the deal with hr. HR needs to be a strategic partner. And this is where we start to see this HR business partner language appearing. Hmm. So late nineties, early two thousands. Hmm. Dot com bubble is bursting. Right. And so, so HR is like, like, oh, I like that idea. I don’t, I don’t just have to do like, boring crap. And, and keep in mind this, this tension between HR as the enforcement arm Hmm. And HR as people who wanted to help people has, [00:12:00] has been there for decades. But now we’re like, oh. Oh, wait. So if we’re, if we’re strategic, then does that mean we get to be part of the strategy sessions? And does that mean that maybe we can introduce the people things before we’re cleaning up the mess? Oh, this would be amazing. Let’s do that. Yeah. We could actually like head them off at the pass before they make really stupid, crappy decisions that affect people like negatively, right? Yeah. Yeah. You would think so. Um, oh. I’ll get to my, my disillusionment moment if in a minute. But, uh, but again, that’s the idea, right? So we all get excited, we all start talking about HR as a strategic function, and then we get in the room and, uh, I’m gonna give a hypothetical one because if I give too many details, it’ll give away where this happened to me. And it’s, you know, been a hot minute since that. But, uh, but, uh, yeah, it was a thing. So I, uh, I’m gonna use a hypothetical [00:13:00] imaginary HR person. Imaginary HR person is a, a, an underling HR person. They’re like an underling. Wait, wait, a senior link? Wait. And we know that she’s gonna be female because 70% of HR people, uh, globally are female, right? Oh, yeah. What would she give her? Can we give her a name? Jill. Jill. Oh, that’s the Jill’s name. Yeah. She hangs out with Jack. They climb a hill. There’s, there’s waters. She’s the one who doesn’t mess up. You totally got me with that one. I did not see that one coming. I am so clueless. Alright, so Jill. Jill. Jill is, Jill is in her like first strategic meeting and, um, she’s pretty excited. She’s like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m finally in this room. And they’re talking about an initiative that’s going to impact hundreds of employees and hundreds of employees jobs. And, uh, she wants to show her value. So, you know, Jill raises her [00:14:00] hand and was like, Hey, so where’s the research on how this is going to impact our people and what are the resources we’re going to use to mitigate that impact? Sounds strategic, right? The, uh, executives get real quiet and then kind of glance sideways at Jill’s manager and well name him Jack, because, you know, Jill reports up to a Jack and, um. And, uh, then they say, oh, you know what, we’ll talk about that in another meeting. And then they move on with the meeting. And after the meeting, Jill, uh, Jill is talking to Jack about how the meeting went. And Jack is like, you know, I’m, I’m gonna save you some, I’m gonna save you some, some trouble. When we talk about being strategic and we talk about people, we’re not talking about what we’re going to do for the people. We’re talking about how we’re [00:15:00] going to get the people to go along with what we want to do, how we’re Beal that’s going to use them. Yes. That’s the betrayal because our human resources are resources to use, not humans to take care of. They are cogs in a machine. They are line items on a spreadsheet. And that is, and this is, this is actually a compilation of multiple stories that I’ve heard from multiple. HR people. There’s lots of chills and there’s lots of jacks out there. And if you don’t believe me, I want you to think of the way we talk about change management. The number one thing you talk about in change management is how are we going to overcome resistance? And at no point do you stop and say, wait, but is the resistance telling us something? Like why are they resistant? We just assume they’re resistant because they don’t know what we know. We are the smart people and we just have to educate them and, and [00:16:00] get them to do what we want them to do. Oh my God, you’re like HR people. You’re like, you’re like super spilling back at me. Everything, like all the trainings that I took after the fact, ‘cause of course I did change management learning. On the move, like while I was in the job, it was like, we’re doing this thing called change management. You’re really good with Dex and explaining shit. So, oh, was I the first person to cuss? Do I get that? Do I ding, ding, ding. Get You probably need some balloons. I Oh, oh, oh. There we go. I need some balloons. First person to cuss on them. Okay. Right. So for those of you guys who are in life, like feel free if there’s something that, you have a story where you’re like, oh my God, this feels like you’re talking about my life. Or, you know. Thank you Eric. See, it was Ulrich. Huh? It was Ulrich, although I wanna say Ulrich Alrich Rich. Oh, maybe it all of Robert Urich who did these really cool, like detective. [00:17:00] Anyways, we are not gonna go there. Sorry. Yeah, that one. I don’t know if you, you, you lost me on that one. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a string. I can’t follow the crown of. But yeah, if, if, uh, if you all have something where you’re like, oh my gosh, I, I, this is the moment that I realized that HR wasn’t my friend, or this is the moment that I, as HR realized I don’t get to be other people’s friends and, you know, what did that do to you? Because we have, I, I actually was talking with Dr. Joe Burrell on LinkedIn this morning, and, um, she had forwarded me over the research that they did on burnout in hr and action in hr. And it’s incredibly prevalent. And it’s funny, when I did my dissertation research on burnout in physicians, I didn’t think that I was studying hr. I, and, and then I realized, so I’m gonna give you all some background because there are plenty of you who have not listened to my incredibly boring research. So [00:18:00] physicians are really fascinating physicians. Burnout faster than the general population significantly. And they are also more resilient than the general population. And we have all sat through those. Yes, Katie probably could, but throw it in chat anyways. Um, so we have all sat through those rollouts of wellness apps where they’re going to teach us to be more resilient. And again, we don’t think about what, what the company’s actually saying there. Right. They’re saying we are not gonna change the things that we know are harming you. We’re just gonna make you tolerate it better. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And nobody seems to care about that, like being a problem. Like no one seems to think it’s a problem. And if you do think it a pro, it’s a problem. You’re naive and you’re not strategic. Right. Oh, how did we get her, Deb? What happened? Oh gosh, girl. You were talking about the research with the doctors. Oh, with the physicians. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, [00:19:00] so. It turns out that that resilience is not the answer to burnout in all cases. And we, we know it does work sometimes, right? So what is different about physicians? So physicians are subject to a very specific kind of moral injury, and they are. So the, the language of medicine is all about patient care, right? Mm-hmm. And we talk a lot about like, making your second medical home or, you know, care being part, like, like taking care for, being part of giving care and all of this sort of language, right? And so physicians are surrounded by language that tells them to care. Oh. And working in systems that doesn’t allow them to, right? An, an accountant or a lawyer is more in charge of your healthcare than any physician on any given day. Abso absolutely. Anyone who lives the US knows that that’s the truth, right? Yeah. So, [00:20:00] so. That’s true of physicians, but it’s also true in hr. Yep. There’s this sort of self betrayal burnout and, and that is something that is shared by educators, it’s shared by physicians, and it’s shared by human resources. And so we’re, we’re not telling you this to make you feel sorry for us. We’re, we’re telling you this to say that we in HR can see it too. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. And, and here’s, here’s the thing that gets me about this, this whole thing. So, and I’ve been, okay, so for those of you who know or don’t know, I was at Accenture for 24 years, um, primarily in hr, uh, global. They hid me away in a little global department because, believe it or not, I wasn’t the type of person that they wanted, like actually talking to clients and stuff, who would’ve [00:21:00] UNK it? Uh, when I, when I came out, you know, ‘cause think about it, I’m, I was in this company, 700,000 employees, 700,000. That is not a typo. That is literally how big this fricking company is. And suddenly I’m let loose on the world and I start meeting all these really fascinating people that I would never have met if I would’ve stayed at Accenture. And I’m realizing for the first time, it, it’s that thing. Remember hives told you about, we’ve talked about this, like when you’re the fish in the fishbowl, the water is the context in which you swim and you can’t see the water because you’re living in it. Right? You’re living in that water. You can’t see it, you can’t seal the crap in it. Whatever. And that’s what I was when I was at Accenture. Now we, I’m sure we’ll get into it before I can give you moments of when I had that moral, what did you call it? Moral, um, harm or whatever that moral. Moral injury. Oh, I can, I remember them very clearly ‘cause they were right before I got put on [00:22:00] leave of absence and for partial hospitalization for anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. But that’s a whole nother story. So when I got out, I could finally see HR for what it was, and I saw that we had become this, we were either the shield to leadership, like leadership doesn’t wanna be the bad guy. They gotta be the good guys, right? The, the, the leaders in charge, the C-suite, whatever, they gotta, you know, they gotta be the good guys. They’re the good ones, you know, look at. And so HR becomes the shield for any of their crappy decisions. So the ones that you know, or the puppets were the puppets of leadership. Like, okay, now you tell them this and now you tell them that, or, and we’re the police of the employees we’re kind of fucked anyway. You look at it like, like this is what we, we are either the police or the puppets. Um, I couldn’t see that when I was in it, but now it’s like so fricking clear and it’s like, why would I choose to be, [00:23:00] what this, like, what, why would I choose to be in this profession? Like, really, and to me it perfectly explains why the majority of HR is women. I mean, it’s, it, it’s so obvious. You just, you just threw us back on the rails. You reminded me where we started, right? Look at that. Like we took a detour. Now we’re coming back. And, and Katie and April of the comments have also reminded me of some of the things. Okay. So HR moving into strategic language concurrently, you know, as HR begins to take their seat at the strategic table and realize that being strategic means you get to Coplay as the CEO in finance instead of actually be the people function. So now. In order to keep your, ‘cause people don’t matter, right. In order to keep your seat at the table, you have to basically give up that attachment to people. Yeah. You’re strategic now. Yep. Also going out at the same time, uh, people [00:24:00] are, social media is becoming more prevalent. People are, are able to talk to each other more, right? So there’s, there’s more and more and more of this sort of like internet culture of like going to the internet for answers. And so in the early two thousands, right, as this like strategic focus in HR is really taking off, you start to see mentions in employment blogs, like in, in employee protection focused like blogs that employment lawyers are using, that HR is not your friend, and sort of focused on documentation. And, and by 2017 you’re actually seeing that in, uh, 2011 might’ve been the first article, but like, you know, the 2000 tens, 2000 fifteens. You’re starting to see that actually showing up as a full like headline in places like Forbes, HR is not your friend. Right. And now it’s all over red. You, you can’t, you can’t say HR without, is not your friend appearing like we talked about at the beginning. Yep. Also going on socially in the US is the very rapid, if you, if you think about the timing of it, because it sort of started in the mid [00:25:00] eighties and progressed really quickly, rapid disappearance of external employee support mechanisms. So unions disappearing, we’re in the single digits and unions and the US at this point, um, the EEOC is, they get some new laws, but they get no funding and no structure to enforce them. And they’re a, they’re an executive branch function, right? So every time the executive branch changes over, like their mandate changes. Their, their, their supports change, their resources change. So there’s nothing external for employees to rely on, and now there’s nothing internal for employees to rely on and they can all talk to each other. And betrayal is a very powerful emotion. And so when people experience betrayal, they talk about it. Yep. And so it’s no wonder that this [00:26:00] idea got seeded very, very rapidly. And it’s not wrong. Like look at, look at what Katie posted in the chat. It’s not wrong. But here’s the thing that I also want us to get here again, HR is the messenger. HR is the messenger. We are being used by leadership as the shield for their crappy decisions. And, but have you noticed an increase in prevalence of HR people who don’t seem to mind being the messenger? No. That is true. That is absolutely true. Uh, I absolutely, I agree. The, the once you mind being the messenger have burned. Yep. Or they, they left and they switched sideways. They’ve moved sideways into things like leadership development. Yep. Yep. And so they’ve gone off to become fractional people where they don’t have to do that, right? Oh, yeah. No, I, I will never again for the rest of my life, I’m, I, this is, this is the hill. I’ve told you this before. I’m telling all of you who are listening. I will never, again, for the rest of my life, stand in front of [00:27:00] an executive committee and tell them what to do. Tell them the plan, tell them my diagnosis of the problems that need to be changed and what has to happen. Have them do 20% of it and then tell me it didn’t work. That is just like me as a doctor saying, you know what? You have high blood pressure and you need to start exercising and you need to change your diet, and then you buy a new treadmill. Don’t use it. Come back to the office and tell me it didn’t work. Like, nah, dude. So, oh my God, Nicole, I’m having all these like flashbacks to all of these times when we would have these incredibly awesome plans for how we could like alter things at the company. Like, because I was in a global, you know, global COE center of expertise, right? An expert in talent supply chain, y’all. And we would have these brilliant plans, these fucking amazing ass plans that would like [00:28:00] alter things. And it would always go in and then it would come back and we’d get maybe 15% of what we wanted to do and be like, this is your budget, this is, or we’d get started on it and, you know, get into when, when a company is 700,000 employees, you can imagine it’s like trying to steer the Titanic, you know, trying to make things change and things happen. And we’d always get a certain level. We’d be like, oh no, budget’s been cut. Oh nope, there’s no budget for that. And now I’m like, you’re saying this. And I’m like, holy crap. Uh. I’m remembering every single one of those, it’s like this flashing like slideshow in my brain right now. I’m like, oh, yin, sorry for the flashback. That’s okay. I will survive. ‘cause I will, ‘cause uh, I’m not in it anymore and I can see it now for the first time ever I could see it and I’m not willing to do it again. Yep. That’s exactly it. Katie. You gotta say the budget for the C-suite bonuses. I mean, and that’s, and that’s where this system is so broken because the [00:29:00] incentives that, I mean, one of my, one of my former coworkers used to say that humans are like water. And if you, if you want to direct them in a certain direction, make sure that direction is downhill and there are no rocks in the way. And, uh, that’s what we don’t do when we’re designing the way our systems work, particularly in publicly traded companies. Your. Your executives are not incentivized to care about any of this? No, absolutely not. Abso riggly not, I remember every single time we’d be like, okay, so what are the, what are the incentives for the executives? Oh yeah. Those aren’t gonna have them do this. How can we alter the incentives for the executives so that they actually have some buy in front? And inevitably, it always ends up being some kind of cobbled together BS and they end up figuring some way around it, you know? Yeah. To look like they’re getting the shit done and they’re, you know, using, you know, [00:30:00] using their, their people below them to, yeah. Ah, so, uh, I thought of something when we were talking about change management and, uh, this is gonna be more unhinged than usual because I’ve had no time to develop it or filter it. I love about hinged, so the way we do change management and the way we treat resistance and the. Inherent assumptions that our executives know better than the people who actually do the job. I mean, they get paid better. It so hard, because I’m seeing this, I’m like, isn’t it ironic? Don’t, it’s, isn’t it unfortunate? Don’t you think it’s, it’s ridiculous. We do. We pay them more, and for some reason we think if they’re getting paid more, that must mean that they know more. But, but we have to translate everything we tell them into executive language, right? We have to translate upwards to them. Like, I thought you knew more. I thought you were paid more. I thought you were [00:31:00] paid to do the job of, of being the executive. Why do I, as the individual contributor, I, as the frontline store clerk, have to translate into your language, like should yourself, the lever of your business. For every time I had to show an executive how to create a PDF, God, I’d be rich right now. But anyway, still. Okay, so please, so here’s my AM example. Please continue. Alright, so you, we we, we work for a company and the job of our company is to sell chickens to farmers. Oh, okay. We are a, we are a chicken distribution, a alive chicken distribution company. Live chicken. Not, not Tyson. We’re, we’re, we’re giving happy chickens, not dead ones. So our, our board has noticed that one of the [00:32:00] blockages to effectiveness for us, one of the things that’s costing us money that we don’t like is, thats are Congest Chicken delivery Road roadways are congested. And also a lot of these farms are down dirt roads and the rocks are kicking up and it’s damaging the trucks. And then we’re having to like repair trucks and we don’t like this. This is annoying. And the trucks are too far. The, the farms are too far apart. Oh, we’re like this. This is, this is a, this is a, this is a roadblock. We have a problem with this. Oh. So the way we’re going to solve it, we have this friend who we play golf with, and our friend who we play golf with happens to own a bunch of planes. We’re like, cool, Steve, Steve with the planes. So Steve with the planes is like, well, you know, why don’t you use planes? Planes are better than cars. And you’re like, you know what, Steve? You’re right. Steve is really brilliant. And, uh, and we like Steve because like golf of Steve, like Steve, have the good tea time at the country club, or we just little parachutes and all the chicken. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Deb, no, no. Forget what you know about [00:33:00] farming. You’re the CEO. You know nothing about farming. So now. You’ve decided that we’re gonna use Steve’s planes because it’s a great way to give a contract to our friend who has the good tea time at the country club. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna airdrop the chickens and, and chickens have wings, so they’ll be fine. We got a little helmets on. No, no, no, no. The chickens will be fine. They have wings. Right. And so in this meeting where, where you, the CEO are proposing this to the board, and the board is like, oh, that’s a brilliant idea. That’ll solve all of our problems. And it gives a contract to Steven. We like Steve, and then the secretary who’s taking notes in the corner, Jill again, she, she got fired of hr. I was supposed to become an edit. She got moved out of HR because she was causing too many problems. She cared about people. So Jill raises her hand and she says, Hey, um, quick question. So, you know, just by coincidence, my daddy’s a farmer and, uh, we raised chickens. And you know, you know, chickens can’t fly, right? And the CEO’s like, of course they can fly. They have wings. You don’t know anything. You’re not strategic. Like [00:34:00] your, your role in this jaw, in this, in this place is to take notes. Stick to your lane, Jill. And so, you know, the, the board goes on a listening tour, and I’m not listening tour. They’re listening for affirmation. And so they talk to the drivers and they’re like, Hey drivers, you know, like we’re gonna have, we’re restructuring and we don’t really need drivers anymore. Um, so you’re, you part of the org is gonna go away just by audio. We’re cutting ffy. I by 15% just FYIs. But also, you know, so the salespeople, we want you to message the farmers and let them know that their chicken fit, their chicken delivery is gonna be much more efficient. And as a bonus, your chickens are going to come with the ability, with, with flight experience that’s gonna get unhinged. Right now we’re, we’re selling chickens with flight experience, [00:35:00] right? Here we are. And so. They, they roll out this plan, right? You know, there are a couple of people on the front line, a couple of salespeople who are like, Hey, you guys, you guys know that chickens can’t fly, right? And, and, uh, and, and even if they could, dropping them on a plane is probably not the best way to do this, right? Um, so the CEO’s like, oh, they’re resistant. Like, you know, they’re not aligned. We, we really need to like, start finding a way to phase those guys out. Like they, they clearly are not aligned with the future direction of our company. Maybe, maybe we should, like the drivers play up bodies. Yeah. We’re gonna put some of the drivers into their function. It’s fine. Right? So, all right. All right. So now we, we, we start dropping our chickens and our chickens die. And our farmers are curious. And so now the customer service people, it’s not about chickens dying. I’m sorry. Why? Customer service people start messaging up to, to, you know, sales enablement and saying, Hey, um, the farmers are really mad.[00:36:00] They don’t like the new system. So this, you know, eventually trickles its way up to the C-suite. And the C-suite says, oh, well, you know, those farmers, they just don’t understand what we’re giving them. We really need marketing to work on this. And that’s how change management works in modern organizations. But we throw like lovely, you know, Sean Mnemonics that no one can actually remember what they mean. Like, add car. That’s not a real add car. What the fuck does that mean? I still don’t deal with awareness, desire, and knowledge. I never remember the second A or the R. Um, but basically, and what’s funny is I’ve been trained today, I still can’t remember the second A or the R. Um, and is it, wait, wait, wait. Is it Prosci? Prosci Pros. How is that pro Prosci? It’s, it’s Prosci. That’s what I thought. Professional science, I think is where it came from originally. No. Oh, here’s another rant for you. Business. Business loves to call itself a science. What other science do you know [00:37:00] that gets. To just argue with reality. Like, like, oh, reality contradicts our science. So reality is wrong. Like, make that make sense. Wait, what was that little thing? Did you hear that little thing? What was that little thing? I didn’t hear that little thing. It might be my headphones. Maybe they’re dying. Oh, I think they’re dying. They’re don’t cha know. I have those. He one die complete. Do you? Yeah. They’re hurting. They’re hurting though. Right here. They out. It’s the side of my ears. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t put anything over my, and well, one, they give a headache. What, where do, where are we gonna put all the little chicken bodies? Oh, that’s not our problem. That’s the part’s profit. And really we’re just preki the chickens. I mean, we’re, we’re, they’re, they’re coming presa. It’s a.[00:38:00] Oh my God. Oh, I gotta breathe. I gotta breathe. We, we did tell you guys that the rails were optional, right? They’ll power through Katie. They’re gonna be grit. They’re not gonna have grit. Or maybe some, oh, you know what? We can sell foxes to clean up the chicken bodies. Oh, there you go. That’s diversification of our, um, business verticals. That sounds appropriately, rightly. Absolutely. And, and maybe we could have Tyson come and pick up the bodies or something. I don’t know. Oh, get someone else to pay for it, because the won’t pay for Tyson. Tyson is not gonna do that because Tyson only uses like creepy, genetically modified chickens. Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen the size. Of the chickens that come out of Tyson, but there is [00:39:00] no way that those are normal, like zero chance. They’re GMO enhanced, is that what you’re telling me? Oh, they’ve gotta be, they constantly gotta be, I wouldn’t trust you. I wonder about that sometimes, because some of those boobs that you see in the, in the, in the grocery, no, they’re, they’re like, they’re like triple H. That’s not a thing. See, April, they can’t even walk the chicken Well, and they’re not even allowed to walk because nothing looks like, oh, let’s not even start. That’s such a sad thing. Yeah, no, that’s a, that’s an awful, awful, awful, awful industry. I, I, I spent a year of my life in Arkansas. My mom actually works for Tyson for like, uh, the, oh, yeah, no, it’s, it’s, I, there’s some TV show or something I saw around removing the beaks or something like that. Oh, no, I think I, I’m thinking of the mo the TV show Grim or something like that. Oh, I don’t know. I, it’s, the brain is just going, um, but your whole chicken story. It’s like my entire history of [00:40:00] dealing with companies is like that. It’s kind of scary. Like, and so many of us are living in it and we don’t even see it. Like it’s so normal to us that that’s how we’re doing. We’re parachuting chickens in. Yeah. Well, and I mean, think about like in h in hrs role in this, right? Like the role we were sold was strategic business partner. Yeah. The, the, the implicit, like the sort of implied relationship was that we got to be for the people, even, even throughout, like I have, um, so my bachelor’s is in organizational behavior and communications. I have an MBA with an HR focus, and then my doctorate is in organizational development leadership. And at every point in that, there was you. There was discussion of how you took care of people. And when we do leadership development, we train our leaders to [00:41:00] have empathy and to care about their people. And then we don’t look at these environments. I mean, I stopped doing leadership developments because I realized I was training people to care about people and then sending them into an environment that punished them for caring about people. And I couldn’t do it. No, this, this is, this comes back to that more like you were talking about. What is it again? Moral. Moral injury. Moral injury for some reason on my brain, does not wanna capture that word injury. Um, so this, and I will tell you just like anyone else that’s in a company or in a job for a certain amount of time and you like that paycheck coming in, I can remember exactly the moment. Where, uh, everything started to fail for me. And it was when I started being a supervisor for someone Hmm. Who was in South America and I worked for the great company, right? You know, L-G-B-T-Q rights, you know, [00:42:00] you know, uh, DEI, the whole thing. Like, whoa, you know, it was like, oh, it’s so awesome and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I see how much this woman is making, doing a job, very similar to mine, and she’s making literally a sixth of what I’m making. And I remember looking at that going, wait, that can’t be right. And admittedly, I’m crappy with numbers. Let’s just admit that I’m crappy with numbers, but I’m doing the exchange rate and everything else. And I’m like, this can’t be right, this can’t, this can’t be right. Like we, we treat our employees fairly. We, you know, believe in a fair wage, we believe in, you know, all this other stuff. And I remember looking at that going, how can I reconcile? I work for this company and that we supposedly treat people fairly and you get a fair wage for your, for your labor, and we don’t take advantage of other people. And yet here’s someone who’s doing a job very similar to mine, who’s making [00:43:00] literally a fraction of what I make. How can I, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t. That was the first time, the first moral injury where I was like, oh. But then of course I looked at my, I got my promotion, I got my nice little hefty check and it was like, Hmm, maybe I can kind of look. And then you start justifying it, right? Like, what? And then you start to justify is more expensive. And, and this is, this is, and this is where people get stuck and look, they’re gonna give them a percentage of that salary in a US dollar. Gosh. Well, and and so you, you learned to not look? I did. I did. And, but that was near the end. This was when I was already in burnout and it was like. You know, I keep, we’ve, you and I have talked about this, we come from the generation where you don’t mental health, that’s a whole nother, like, woo, that’s a whole nother topic we could get into. Say that. You don’t ask for help the later one. Yeah. You don’t ask for help. And so I didn’t, and I was just, I just gotta muscle through. I just gotta yout it down muscles through, keep doing it. [00:44:00] Um, and then of course there’s a point where your body literally can’t do it anymore. There was a point where I could not physically keep up with, I mean, I was trying, Nicole, I was trying so hard. I mean, there would be like, I’d be setting timers, reminders for all these meetings and I would still somehow manage to like, woo, which was never my thing. I was usually that person that was there early. Like I was there always, you know, to get there. And then, and then you watch yourself doing this. You’re, and you, and rather than think, oh, the system that I I’m in is kind of ridiculous, you think obviously there’s something wrong with me that I can’t keep up with this. Everyone else can like, so I posted a TikTok about that last night. Yeah. That we are trained from childhood to see a system that tries to standardize us and to see our struggles with a standardized system [00:45:00] with us as the problem. Yeah. About the system, right? Yeah. Yeah. If we started in school, like think, think of the school day and how unaligned with childhood biology it is, and throw in even the tiniest aspect, the tiniest little drop of spice, not even pepper like paprika fairly even has flavor. You throw it on deviled eggs, but it’s still enough to make that school day harder for you. Yeah, yeah. But if it’s harder for you, then you’re the problem. Yes. And we’re, we are taught that from the very beginning. Yes, abso Fri. It’s, it’s it, you know, and, and so many things are clearer now, now that I’m no longer in that it’s like a, a, a, I don’t know if it’s age, maybe it’s age too, Nicole. I don’t know. I, I, I like to feel like it. I, I [00:46:00] experienced that perfect storm and somehow that perfect storm suddenly made me see the absolute ridiculousness that we have created here in the US that we call work, that we call living. And it is really being controlled by companies. It’s completely controlled by companies. They get the whole say like, for everything, for our healthcare. They get the, the, basically whether we live or die, I mean. This is the only country in the world where you can lose your job. Hey, lose your life because you lose your healthcare and it’s, yeah, ridiculous how we’ve set it up this way. Anyways, I could get into a whole philosophical thing. Let’s not go in there. We have plenty of episodes. We can do whatever we want. No rails. April, how did we sidebar on Penika course we see now you say paprika and I say I see [00:47:00] paprika, but this is, maybe this is the southern, Northern. You and I have talked about this before. Like some people say pecan and they’re just wrong. Pecan. What do you want? I, you know, lived in Texas for 13 years. I know. It’s be I, I will tell you, the first time I moved to Texas and the first time someone used the word y’all in a business meeting, I literally snorted. We were, I could see, I could see the room. It’s, you know, floor 13 of the Allen Parkway building for Accenture. All of these people sitting around and having a meeting and someone goes, well, y’all need to blah, blah, blah. And I went like that because I’m from Minnesota and I’ve never heard someone use the word y’all in a business meeting. And I lose it. And everyone’s like, you know, it’s actually become, it’s funny. I trained, I trained y’all outta my voice. I, I, I grew up with a very strong southern accent. I grew up back and forth between Texas and Oklahoma. Yeah. Very strong southern accent. I trained it out of my voice in my early [00:48:00]twenties because it turns out literally nobody takes you seriously with an accent in any other part of the country. They don’t, they don’t, um, Jeff Foxworthy has a whole routine about it. It’s very amusing. So, um, I trained it out and then in the last five years, I feel like all of a sudden I’ve seen it make a comeback in business because it’s very inclusive. Right. It’s not gendered. And, and I used to joke all the time that it was the most useful word when I was, you know, silly. But it’s, it’s singular. It’s girl. You can, you can uh, you can also like add attitude to it. So there’s y’all, y’all, and then there’s all y’all. It’s like, if people are in trouble, it’s not all y’all selves. All y’all’s selves. Yeah. All y’all like, gotta to get that together. All y’all gotta get that together. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s, it’s a perfect word for that. It’s better. ‘cause I grew up saying, dude, my, my best friend Carrie and I, we say do do each other. It’s like, dude, dude, dudes [00:49:00] like the scene in basketball. It totally is. But y’all serves the same purpose. Yeah, it really does. And and who knew, who knew that the, like most absolutely inclusive word was gonna come out of the south? It, it, it defies all reasoning, which really proves that anything could happen. Anything could happen. Like it, like nothing is. Nothing is taboo anymore. Nothing is like completely without, you know, the possibility of happening. I mean, granted, we still have gravity and nobody can really explain what it is. So that might be the only absolute, but pretty much everything else seems to just be kind of like, whatever. Yeah, yeah. You guys goonies for this sort of, yeah, I, I, I was saying you guys all the time, and then I got in trouble for saying you guys, um, ‘cause that’s a Minnesota thing here. You know, you was Oh, you guys, you guys, oh, you guys.[00:50:00] And one of my husband’s best friends, I actually told you this last night, is from Edina and, uh, Edina. And, uh, every day I need attention. Just, that’s what, so when I was, when I was in the midst of training my accent out of my voice, one of the things that happened is I picked up all of the accents around me and I went to school in Colorado Springs, Colorado College. It’s not where I graduated from, but it’s where I started. It’s where I met my husband. Um, spent a couple of years there, discovered I didn’t wanna live in Colorado Springs. Um, love Denver though. And, uh, I was picking up these accents and I was surrounded by a lot of Minnesota accents because Colorado College is a big hockey school, know, and at the time it was a good hockey school, not so much anymore. And, uh, this friend is someone who’s accent I picked up pretty easily, except when I first picked it up, I sounded a little bit more like the Swedish chef [00:51:00] from the mt. What, or forester? Super dark. So I would, I would say like the Minnesota golden Gophers. Like, he’s like, you know, you sound ridiculous, right? You’re gonna take the boat out of the lake. Yeah. The pontoon out on the lake there. No, I, when I lived in Houston, I, I can’t tell you how, well, first of all. If, if you, if you live in Texas and you don’t either go to UT or Texas a and m, you don’t exist. That’s simply, or at least from Accenture’s view, excuse TCU was a very good school and you’re allowed to go there if you live in Fort Worth. Okay. Okay. So, okay, okay, okay. Okay. But when we, when I went to, when I, when I got in, or what did it, I got into the, a accent, a centralized, the Accenture way I got sent to St. Charles for training. Right. We’re learning how to do C plus. Wow. I’m really going back here. And we were at the college pub ‘cause there was a pub on, you know, this was back in the late nineties, [00:52:00] early aughts. You could get away with that shit still. And, uh, they’re all doing like their fight song, you know, the UT Fight song or the, you know, the, their fight song. And everyone’s like, Deb, do yours. So I’m like. We come from St. Ola, we sure are the, and I start singing it, right? And then I get to the um, um, and literally three people from other part of the bar come running up and start singing it with me. And my Texas friends thought that was the most hysterical thing that they’d have. Like people, um, yeah. Um, um, yeah. Anyways, we, we, we, we had very different times in, in pubs in bars. Deb, now, now I need to tell you what happens in a bar in Miami. So you would’ve cause trouble in a bar in Miami. One of the fastest ways to do it is to make sure that you have a Cuban and nearly any other form of Spanish speaking person. But Puerto Rican works really well and ask them [00:53:00] what the rooster says and you’ll watch grown ass people. Hey, look, I made it, I made it all the way to the end before I cursed. So you know what? I think I get a point for that. Um, people. Who will get into a fight about whether the rooster says Kku or Kiki, and you can actually get the entire bar to start fighting with each other and using, I love it. I did it at least seven times now because I guess, so Minnesota, right? My mom was Swedish. I grew up eating and making Swedish foods, and one of the, some of the Swedish foods have the last part of Kaka, but it’s KAKE, but it pr it’s pronounced Kaka. So when I started making these different Swedish delicacies for my Houston friends, I’m like, oh, this is Krum Kaka, this is Pepper Kaka. And they’re like, it’s shit. Is that what it’s, it’s shit? And I’m like, oh, [00:54:00] wow. It’s amazing. To put, I mean, you’re talking about a culture. So my, my, again, my, my, my family is Texas, Oklahoma. My dad’s from Oklahoma, my mom’s from from Texas. And uh, um, my dad was in the military and one of the things that he would make pretty regularly if he was just like cooking up something pretty fast, um, he called it SOS and it was like a, like slice of bread and like some meat gravy, like hamburger gravy. That sounds yummy. I was about seven years old when I learned what the SOS stood for, um, which is shit on a shingle. So I guess it would not be unheard of for food to have that in the name. It makes perfect sense to you. See now when you describe that, what I think of is chipped beef. My mom would make that salty. The chef [00:55:00] put it over bread. Like this is my mom’s cooking. So my mom, my mom came from the cooking school of you gotta cook the hell out of it. So I did not realize that pork, like I thought pork shops were the most disgusting things ever because they would be hard as disgusting things ever. I know. But see, but it would be hard as, and so the first time I think I was at a wedding reception or something and someone was like, a pork chop. And I’m like, why would I order a pork chop? And then I took a bite of it. I was like, oh my God, this is, this is amazing. And I didn’t realize that I had grown up with meat that had to be black before it was considered don. You know, April that carrots and beef stroganoff, if you, uh, do it with a tomato sauce instead of a, instead of a cream sauce and throw it over like macaroni needles. That was a really common, we, we called it goulash. It is nothing like gage. Hot. The most things that here in Minnesota there don’t, you know, it’s a hot dish. Hot dish. Hot dish. So the only hot dish I’ve ever had is this like weird tater tots casserole. Oh fuck yeah. [00:56:00] Tater tot casserole girlfriend. And depending on what part of Minnesota you come from, you’re gonna have different things in it. Like, I grew up and it had, it was beep because it was usually the shit from your, sorry, I, let me try to not swear anymore. It’s usually the stuff left over from the week that all gets dumped into a casserole. Usually with some, with tater tots, some sort of like cream of something soup over it. And then you put into the oven and that’s what you get on a Friday night. And the tater talk casserole kind of makes it look better. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a thing. But what I was saying, people couldn’t, I’m, because the medicine, the accent, I, I’m very like, and then as soon as I said Minnesota, they were like, oh, you’re from Minnesota. It’s the Oh, that gives it away. Everything. The Oh, it gives it away every time. Every time. Speaking cream, cream of anything, soups, Campbell’s, you, you, you’ve like, heard about that like top level executive who was like, oh, there’s not even real meat. And it’s like 3D [00:57:00]printed chicken. And so in my head, the first thing I thought of was like, Ooh, do you think this is like hrs chance for revenge? Like, do they actually like get, because you know, this person made them do, like, mean things to people, right? Like they had to like hurt people who were lower down to protect this person at some point at least once. Yep. Yep. Right. And so April, I’m not sure what’s going on there. I I, it just completely derailed my brain. It comes. So, um, the, uh. Wow. My brain just completely just stuck. You’re talking about the mushroom soup, like HR to retaliate? It’s, and hr, yeah. Like h this, this is like HR Han because that’s, you know, if you are, if you have spent your entire career being injured in this way, and you’re like, you actually do care about people, [00:58:00] it’s this moment of redemption where you’re like, ah, yes, no, no, I’m the one in charge. Because you’re not. I mean, like, yeah. Even if you are the chief HR officer, you are the lowest chief in the room. You are. Like, you, you, you will get overridden by every other person. Ab, even if you’re a male, even if you have a penis, you will still get overridden. It’s just the, that’s what you know. That’s just the way it is. Yep. Yeah. And, and if people aren’t doing what leaders want them to do, you’re the first one fired. Right. As you have any control over people, you’re supposed to though. Yeah, and that’s it. Like you’re, if you’re, if you’re the person who is like, I mean. Back to change management. Think of the language change, fatigue, resistance, change, buy-in, stakeholder management, communication strategy. There, the level of arrogance, right? That your decision is always correct. That the problem is always adoption and that hrs job is to smooth the path and convince people. But I don’t, I don’t [00:59:00] know when HR got signed up. I’m the worst HR person, Nicole. I can’t, ‘cause I’m always gonna side on the side of the employee, and this is why I probably will never, ever get hired by another corporation in my life is because I make no secret of the fact that I’m, I’m in it for the humans. I’m, that’s, you know, and I, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m more interested in the humans than I am and you making more money? I just, you know, but I mean. Do you see a future where HR finally gets the chance? Oh, yes. Oh yeah. To say we’re, you would listen to us all along, we’re, we’re headed there. So here’s what’s happening. The whole fractional movement is what’s gonna pull HR out of the, out of the back room. Because what’s happening now is that fractional executives are leaving companies where they were never listened to and they had to stick within like a certain thing to, to move to the next level and whatever. Now, because they’re [01:00:00] external, these same executives who would listen to them when they were internal will now pay them big bucks to come in and tell them what to do. So this is how we make, this is how HR is gonna make this change because honestly, the future, we need more. We’ve reached the breaking point. I mean, I don’t know how, Nicole, I really don’t know what’s gonna happen here in the next couple years. I have no idea. So, so that’s what we can end with because I just looked at the time and saw that we’re at the end. Oh, so HR is not your. Yep. It’s not today, but all of the people who burned out because they wanted to be your friend. Yep. Might be the people who pull it back. I love it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   10 Jan 2026

   Episode One Is Finally Scheduled!!

   Deb and I can’t wait for this one. Every time we get in a room together it feels like magic. A podcast together felt like a gift to ourselves. We would love it if you joined us live. The entire intent of this show is to keep it free-flowing and with minimal editing so doing it live makes sense. We will see how it goes as this is definitely a learn out loud moment for both of us. The transcript…..sort of:Hey friends - If you’ve ever looked at corporate life and thought, “This can NOT be the best we’ve got”…here’s your Friday feel-good present. You’re going to want to come hang out with me and Deb Haas on our podcast, Rails Optional, this coming Monday - January 12 - live on Substack at 1 PM Eastern, 9 AM Pacific. And just so we’re clear: this isn’t a podcast where we talk at you. It’s two friends hanging out and exploring the stuff corporate life makes complicated in the strangest way…HR, work, systems, AI implementation, “transformation,” and all the invisible rules we’re apparently supposed to accept without question. It’s ADHD entrepreneurship, corporate recovery, AI without the hype, and building a life that doesn’t drain you. Neither one of us is especially good at leaving “taboo” topics alone…so we’ve officially given ourselves permission not to stay on the rails. Between us, we’ve got over 30 years in HR and HR-adjacent worlds. We’ve seen behind the curtain…and we’re willing to talk about the pile of weird things that are back there. You will never catch us complimenting the emperor’s lovely new clothes. We also laugh a lot, go deep fast, and occasionally take a sharp left turn or throw in a random song lyric or movie quote because…ADHD. Here’s how these lives will work: Each episode starts with a topic. And because it’s live, it’s going to wander. It’ll be shaped by what shows up in the chat, what stories people bring, what we’ve been seeing on our socials, and where our brains decide the real thread actually is. Also - we finally nailed down the timing and topic for the first one, which honestly took a minute…because literally every time we get in the same room, our brains light up with ideas and we have the best conversations… …and then we end the call going, “Wait. We didn’t make any decisions.” So. Episode 1. We’re starting with that lovely trope that gets passed around like deep wisdom: “HR is not your friend.” Is it true?Why does that phrase get repeated so much?Is it fair to the actual humans in HR?How does system design and history play tug o’ war with individual intention?How could it be different?What gets in the way of making it different? And because the rails are optional, let me just say: does anyone remember that Arby’s slogan used to be “Different is good”…and then they briefly tried to adult with “Now That Your Tastes Have Grown Up”…and now they’re potentially throwing shade at competitors who may or may not have meat in their food? See? I told you. Rails optional. If you want to join live, bring questions - especially the ones you’ve been carrying around like, “Is it me…or is the system just structured like a haunted house?” Or honestly, come laugh with us when the tech shenanigans inevitably happen…because Substack doesn’t give you a practice run, so who knows what madness we’re in for. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit railsoptional.substack.com (https://railsoptional.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

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