Latest / Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors / Meet a Paralegal Turned Workplace Investigator

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Meet a Paralegal Turned Workplace Investigator · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barby.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Equal Parts Informative and titillating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love to babysit.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that for years and hit 16.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was the legal age to work.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a job at a drive-thru gas station.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this, yes, so I sat in a booth and there was a window.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason I'm sharing this with you.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And people would drive through and we would collect the money.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or we would go out and help them at the pump.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is back when the oil embarcaderos were going on and prices were skyrocketing, and people were so upset because gas was exceeding a dollar a gallon.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things they would do is they would steal the gas, they'd zoom through past our little cashier's window, or they'd do it as a prank.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: What would happen then is that money was taken from the cashier's paycheck.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am, this little 16-year-old making probably below minimum wage.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we had laws even so long ago.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Had a customer drive up to the window and he zoomed through and then he backed up and was taunting me about stealing the gas.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh so I did a like a half a body leap out the window into his lap in the driver's seat to wrestle the keys from him.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was so frustrated.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was so at it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was a good lesson in customer relations.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to share your stature with our audience so they have a full picture of this.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was 4'11.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now 410.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Very big person.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I weighed 78 pounds when I graduated from high school, which was about that time.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I was teeny but fierce.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're a little exact, small but mighty.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: After the gas station, so I was trying to find myself back.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in the mid-70s, and worked there for a couple years and then enrolled in the army or enlisted in the army.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed like a good opportunity.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was not living at home.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had spent a couple of years from the time I was 16 living with friends, couch surfing.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as I reflected back when I was thinking about doing this podcast, I thought, I think I was homeless.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a an upper middle class family, but I was out on my own at a really young age.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: The army had a great deal of appeal.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: This was Vietnam era.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they were taking people on short-term assignments.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I enlisted in helicopter mechanics training school.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So 18th birthday, shipped off to Port to Jackson, South Carolina, went through basic training there, had to scale a six-foot wall.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first group of women who were trained in hand-to-hand combat.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So learn those skills.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You would still see the feminine side come through.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say it, but we would hold hands when we were out on night patrol, which I don't know, maybe the guys were doing that too.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But so this was this was significant enough that 60 Minutes followed us and did a documentary on us as the first group of women who were trained in hand-to-hand combat.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: How did the men treat you, if you remember, when you were that young?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So basic training was all women.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Then when I went to helicopter mechanics school, the sexual harassment there was over the top.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very isolated base.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was no Me Too movement back then.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: We had no idea what our rights were, significant sexual harassment.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm in school and I completed the mechanics training school.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: There was an instructor in the pilot program or light pilots who was stalking me.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was 18 years old.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how it went with women there.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: There were very few women in the program and all these men.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that got the attention of the COO.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: He pulled me out.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked with him directly until I left the military, which was one reason I didn't stay in.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of pressure on women for a lot of reasons, but mainly that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was just really hard, especially on somebody so young.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do now?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about what you do now.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am now a workplace investigator.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Do tell.
• 6:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: What does that intel?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of people don't know.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I work in-house.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I work as an investigator within a company.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a large company, utilities.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing this in various roles since 2012.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we're assigned cases that come through a reporting system.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a third-party reporting system where an employee or contractor or someone can contact these numbers or email addresses with a complaint or concern.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those get assigned out to workplace investigators.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're considered neutral fact finders.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're trained, we're certified.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we delve in, gather the facts.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: The great part about being in-house is that we're also part of the solution because we're partnering with stakeholders, with our human resources people, our union people to determine corrective actions, to resolve a situation, to improve the work climate, whatever we can pull out of these investigations.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about how you got from being 18 in the army to a workplace investigator.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, there's so many years between there.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a curvy yellow brick road, but I feel like I always was building on some skill that I already had.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was in the army, for whatever reason, the drill instructors appointed me and other people as squad leaders.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a promotion and we had a group of people that we led.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was mainly a support role.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a people-facing role.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a lot of coaching involved in it, as well as leading the physical part, surprisingly, with my size.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so carried that forward.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I started working for a large utility as a secretary.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: All the while I was taking courses wherever I could to try to, not so much to try to earn a degree at that point, but I was just curious and I liked learning and I hadn't had that opportunity.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I was doing that.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to work for this utility.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: They had a field employee position come up.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, I could be outside, I could be tan, I'd be walking all the time, I'd be fit.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: That would be awesome.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a union role.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into that.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I went into the union, sustained numerous dog bites.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: What was your specific job?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was a meter eater.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I went out and read meters.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there were there was a lot that I pulled from that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I did get tan.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: I did watch a lot.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was extremely fit, but it really was not a long-term role.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I got pregnant during that time with my second child, with my daughter, and left the company when she was six weeks old because we didn't have family medical leave back then.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was expected that Dr.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Kverjew, after six weeks or so, and then went back to work, and I just couldn't, I couldn't leave my baby.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I took a year off.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of that year, I went to work for a nonprofit, this huge world-renowned nonprofit.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Spent 18 years there.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just a phenomenal role.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I earned, finally buckled down and earned my degree.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a degree in business management, mainly because it's such a people-oriented degree.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was looking at the coursework, there's the operational piece, there's statistics and understanding strategic planning and so on.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of it's around managing people.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that had a lot of appeal.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that simultaneously.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was promoted to a manager position at this nonprofit.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I was managing staff, I was helping write policies.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had this huge HR component in my role.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was responsible for hiring and firing, writing job profiles, all these things.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Started getting to the end of that 18 years, and I was bored out of my mind.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long time to be in the same position.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Decided to do a complete change.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I loved about that role was the contract work.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I loved the negotiating piece.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I loved, I don't know, all the I just loved contracts, the detail.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, I like that piece.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really tired of managing a staff.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So paralegal program had a lot of appeal.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was too old to go to law school, although I regret that now.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was only 45, but I could have done it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so I went to USD.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the few programs in the country at the time, and they were certified by the ABA.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So really good program.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I got out of that program, I knew I wanted to go into a business area.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of my professors' college roommate was Harvard Educated attorney.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: She worked for a small company that was publicly traded.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it was over-the-counter, what we call penny stock.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she offered me the opportunity to come work for her.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would learn the function of the role.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: In the paralegal program, you're learning theory, the legal theory and legal research and writing, but not how to do something.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was going to learn how to prepare a warrant statement, how to convert warrants and stock options and those types of things.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So did that.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was very interesting.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Left there for an HR manager position with a smaller law firm, went from that to a corporate securities position at a very large law firm, and came back to my current employer, which is where I worked as a union employee.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Came back 26 years later in 2010 and have been there ever since.
• 12:09
  unknown: Wow.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Can you share more about the nature of the nonprofit?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to name it, but I'd love to know what type of nonprofit it was.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so conservation education, very wildlife-centered organization, just phenomenal with a great mission.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: The piece about being stuck there with the boredom is it's such a respected entity, and there's so many people committed to that cause.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That you have a PhD come in an admin role, nothing wrong with that.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they will stay there in that role because they simply want to support the organization.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's not a lot of movement.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was less than 1% movement when I left out of a organization with 2,500 people.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say drew you to that particular nonprofit that you can relate to, like on a personal note, that it was drawn you were drawn to it?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would like to say that I was attracted to the mission, and I was.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: The mission was great, but really it was because I had a family at that point.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had two young children, and this was such a family-friendly organization, versus you need to come back to work after six weeks.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there were so many events I could bring my children to.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I could bring my child into the office while I was working.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of my friends had a pregnant dog that she didn't want to leave out on her ranch.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can bring that dog into my office.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I sat there with this pregnant dog with the puppies moving and we had it pressed against my belly.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up owning one of those puppies for 16 years.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it was that kind of environment.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was just it was like living in a movie.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: What do you like best about your role as a workplace investigator?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think because of where I work and because of the people that I've worked for and continue to work for, the best thing about my job is that I'm always supported in terms of holding my work to the highest standard of integrity and ethics.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have never ever been asked to compromise that, which is a great feeling.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not that there's always been agreement necessarily with how things are resolved, maybe, or what a correction act corrective action might be.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: There can be debate around that, but never am I asked to compromise my own ethics.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, of course, there's the people I feel like everywhere I've worked except for one place, which is the wild story.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've just worked with phenomenal people and I get so much joy from that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: On the flip side, yes, what do you not like about your current job?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think the hardest part for me in this role is watching people drive themselves off a cliff.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: As investigators, in the pure role of investigator, we don't coach people.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I've worked previously as a hybrid role, where it's a human resources business partnerslash investigator role, where there was some room for me to do that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly now I'm partnering with human resources people or union people about how they can help coach this person.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm seeing.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, regardless of what you're trying to tell someone, here's how you can save yourself.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It just for whatever reason they can't absorb it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so frustrating and it's heartbreaking sometimes to watch people fail.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: What's a skill that you use now that nobody warns you about that you would need to do your current job?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about the warning piece, but one skill that I have is, and it goes back to being a helicopter mechanic, climbing around on helicopters with a bunch of other blue-collar, grubby-handed mechanics.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And fast forward doing this work as a meteor eater, I was in the trenches and I was a union employee.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I understand that culture and I find those people relatable.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm working on a workplace investigation and that's a person on the other side of the desk, I have the ability to relate to them, which is phenomenal.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great skill.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: But also it gives me the opportunity to express gratitude and respect for what they do.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if I didn't have that insight from actually having been on that side, I wouldn't be doing that.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it just builds trust, which is not why I do it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely have that appreciation for them, but it builds trust so that we have a better outcome for the investigation.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about your industry, what would you change?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think if we have such structure around legal standards, and we should, and it's a very neutral fact-binding job.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: We do have to assess witness credibility.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're looking at motive, we're looking at potential bias, how people are conducting themselves.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: I really wish that we had a deeper focus on that side, not only on what we're seeing superficially, but why are people acting the way that they act?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they doing this?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: It would help so much on the coaching side with people.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: It would help us assess credibility more.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So having that is I can't really be equal with legal standards, but having it is a much bigger focus in training, in how we approach the investigations.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is a magic wand.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're not psychologists.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we were.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I would love to have that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Can you walk us through what does a whole cycle look like from I'm assuming somebody complains or HR?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like how does that whole circle work?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like put on my trench coat and my gum shoes.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So a complaint will come in.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it comes in either through this reporting system or it might come directly from an employee.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's breaking out that complaint, looking at what this person is really concerned about.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes people will just word vomit.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're upset, trying to sort out exactly what is the problem here, what am I looking at?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a first step, and that can actually take a little bit of time.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then we're engaging with the person.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I would be setting up a call right away, an interview right away if we know who that complaint is.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Often they're anonymous.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have the ability to communicate.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: We can send messages through a system and just hope they read them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's breaking it out.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's identifying who the potential witnesses are, what kind of documentation do we need.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we may be going to HR and requesting performance reviews.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: We may be going to our HRIS people to pull data, say if it were an age discrimination case or race discrimination case and requesting statistics on various contexts.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's with spending time interviewing people during the day.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I usually will limit myself to two, maybe three max interviews per day because it's draining and it requires writing afterwards.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a full day.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: There may be some interaction during the day with stakeholders, also with our team.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have a great team of investigators.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are collaborating, we're sharing ideas, we're bouncing ideas off of people.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is maintaining neutrality when checking ourselves for biases.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have been with this company for a long time, I really have to watch out for confirmation bias.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I've had previous interaction with somebody, maybe not so good.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't allow that to play into the current investigation.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's making sure that I'm aware of that by having conversations with my team.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: What's a myth that people believe about your job that just drives you nuts?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say to people who believe that workplace investigators, much like HR, just exist to protect the company and they don't actually care about employees and they don't care about the truth?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: They'll just reach whatever conclusion protects the company best.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's that ties in with what Elsa was saying.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: HR is this sort of dungeon that people maybe get peek in through the door and then they get annihilated.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so what my team has done, what we've been doing, is a very structured outreach where we go to what we call safety stand downs, where there's field crews, we go to employee events, we try to get out as much as possible and engage with people so they see us as humans and not just as the police.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's I think that is a myth that we are there to be biased to represent the company.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm in an investigation, when I start it, I'm going through talking points.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sharing about things like confidentiality, no retaliation.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I also explained to them that I'm a neutral fact finder.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not there to represent the company, even though I work for the company.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not there to represent any party.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm there simply to determine what happened.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I also had the benefit of being able to say, because I've been there for so long, that since the entire time that I've been here, which is over a decade, I have never ever been pressured to make a Finding in favor of the company.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that usually reassures people.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: How often do you find that the employee making the complaint is right and there's some kind of wrongdoing?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's hard to sort this out because we do have substantiated complaints.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's 50-50 how it's going to go.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to determine a percentage because we never know year to year what trends are going to come up, what kind of reports are going to come up.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there it varies.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also the piece when we prescribe corrective action, it might not have anything to do with the actual allegation that was filed.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It might be that we go in and we see some dysfunction in the culture, or we're seeing some dysfunction maybe with leadership, where there's one particular leader where, hey, we've gotten seven complaints over the last three years.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And wait a minute, this person has managed all these different teams.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have a theme, we have a pattern.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we're able to go in and prescribe training for them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, working with our HR people because we don't prescribe that on our own, but trying to find training, doing whatever we can to make the workplace better.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do you build trust with an employee?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it varies from person to person.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have I'm so lucky.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have this benefit of appreciating people and feeling genuine warmth towards people.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I embrace them that way during the start of an investigation without being disingenuous.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to lay that on, but I genuinely genuinely am maybe I should put it more about my curiosity versus warmth, is I've always been very curious about what makes people tick.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things I do love about this work is that piece.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we start off engaging people in even just in casual conversation.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: With me, I'll say, Oh, you've been here X number of years.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know this person?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or I've worked in this area.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'll try to get some talk going on, particularly when I have union people, because I always share that, hey, guess what?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the late 70s, I was a meteoreter.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had such appreciation for what you do.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that genuinely creates instant relatability, and that's where the trust comes from.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a sense that things have gotten substantially better for women working in the trades or in non-traditional roles?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Since, for example, you were in the army and saw such rampant sexual harassment.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not out in the field.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I, from my perspective, no, I don't think that they've gotten better.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's not enough women out there based on my own observations.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's that improved that much.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have better protections.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whether women feel that they can avail themselves of that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect not.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty scary place to be in when you're the only female in a large group of men and trying to endure.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And also there's the piece about wondering if you're going to be believed.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: We do that.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is women when we're victimized, we're just it's not our fault.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's society has put that on us.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is the juiciest, most wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you have witnessed at work.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you can have as many stories as you want.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Going back, I could have some juicy ones on the investigation part, given that I'm still working for this company.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I did work for this very bizarre place.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's it's a two-part story.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this is back, I want to say 2007, 2008, when I went to work for this Harvard-educated attorney in a company where I was going to learn corporate securities.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So she ended up being terminated.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: She was gone, locked out of the building.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was there with this corporate securities packet.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, we had external counsel, but I did have a lot of responsibility, which was fantastic because I got to learn a lot.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: It also put me in the forefront with the board and the executive people.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we started off.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little company in North County in our area, a group of founders, sweetest people ever.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: They had been running this little business for a few years when they had what we call angel investors.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: They had family and friends who'd invested in warrants and stock.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is why they were traded over the counter.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So then a Time Warner executive comes in.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was brought in, and the whole thing starts to fall apart.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: There was a person who came in that he brought in that later became a prominent figure in the current administration, in our political administration.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So okay, this is back before that.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I'm in this company where I'm exposed to this individual.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: The company became chaos.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: There were shenanigans around making changes to the shop stock option legalities that were outside the realm of what terms should have been in those stock options, things like that.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: People were being fired for no reason.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: The grown men crying in conference rooms, screaming.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just utter madness.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So at some point, of course, I thought I got to get out of here.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was hired as an HR manager for a small law firm.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to leave.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: They came running after me with a severance offer, which is bizarre.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: When somebody resigns, you don't give them a severance.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: But they were dying to buy me off.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, because they knew I knew where all these bodies were buried.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this one individual, of course, was the henchman here in this very toxic, disturbing work environment.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just a little bit of the story here.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some years later, about 10 years later, 2016, this person became part of the administration that was going into office.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't connecting it at all.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was not making that connection.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: This was someone who profoundly impacted me in my work life for several years, who I worked directly with.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: One day around 2016, I'm reading this article in the paper, and his picture was there.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this psychotic break where it was really, it was as if this dark curtain had opened, and I thought, oh my god, that is him.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: He is in the White House.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's in the White House.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so around that time I started reading Fire and Fury.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you had an opportunity to read that.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was about the Trump administration during that time.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Absolute chaos, people being terminated, right and left, the henchmen.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was identical to the culture that I'd experienced in this company.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I had blocked this individual out of my mind, really, I had suppressed him so deeply that it took this sort of, like I said, this break in my armor to realize that was him was one of the most bizarre things that's ever happened in my work career.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So he was part of the administration during Trump 1.0.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Does he have a role in Trump 2.0?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: To TBD.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's been he's prominent in the news, and he's I my sense is that he's trying to get back in there, and there's some resistance to that.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: He remains very prominent in the media.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would name him honestly, but I probably you'd find me with my feet encased in cement at the bottom of some river somewhere.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Part of my my severance was the signing a severance agreement from that company.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in it they had a clause where I could never testify against the company.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that's illegal.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: Do you realize how many people are probably getting a contract like that?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like back in the yeah, that's not enforceable.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So go ahead and sign those to our listeners.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and sign those.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: They are not enforceable.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I again, I'm not an attorney, but I knew enough then to know that no, this is not enforceable.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I took the money and ran.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I was called into two different gender discriminations, discrimination cases from that particular company.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the worst experience that I had while working for him, we had external counsel for trademark, for film library that we owned in New York.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're working with all these different people.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed my relationship with the New York attorneys.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we would go back there for work.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they helped me during my early days when I was alone trying to manage this legal portfolio when I didn't have any experience.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: At any rate, that regime decided that they were going to terminate him and they wanted me to fly out with them because I had sort of an HR role with them too.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I had a administrative role.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fly out with them.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was devastated because there was no reason to fire him.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's absolutely no reason to fire him.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they were just doing it out of this viciousness that was pervasive.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I flew back and watched him cry.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the biggest regret of my entire career that I didn't call him the day before and say, look, this is happening.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: It just still eats at me.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of the New York lawyers.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: The person who was involved in Trump 1.0 and is still prominent in the media.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is this person named in the Epstein Files?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: My take on that is there's a lot of sexual allegations, sexual context in the Epstein files.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't fathom that with this person because there's no human interaction with him.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's no engagement, particularly with women.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So my take on it is simply that this was somebody who was very wealthy and he wanted to get in there and engage with him on that level, on a business level.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's mentioned many times in those files.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, he doesn't remember my voice.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it seems very unlikely.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: I lived a long life a long time ago.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: As you've been climbing up the ladder in different positions and things like this, was this something that you even thought was attainable as far as the position that you're in?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Did you know it even existed?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Or you were like, I literally just fell into this career.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I fell into it.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very lucky coming back to this company.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a couple a couple of years in the corporate governance group as paralegal.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a position opening for in the investigations group, which was one person, for somebody who had an HRN legal background.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So interviewed, and I will tell you, I thought I blew that interview.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I went to one of our VPs was present during the interview, and I went to him the next morning.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, gosh, I just really screwed that up.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he put on his poker face and said, Have you talked to them?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I got this wonderful position and worked for this person who had such an impact on me starting off in that company.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: She was administering this work and called me into her office and said, This is what you know you need to do here and let me run with it, which was perfect for my style.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then at some point shortly after I'd started working with her and I was administering cases more than actually investigating.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: She signed a case to me.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Do you want to investigate this?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a great case to work on.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: It really involved an analysis of a settlement that went out regarding litigation against our company.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So really interesting case.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that sort of launched that.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: So she had a great deal of faith in me for whatever reason.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I continued to grow in that role.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was also really interested in diversity and inclusion.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I started heading up the corporate DENI group, which is a volunteer group.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: That led to me going to a subsidiary of our company as a DI manager for a few years.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I was continuing to investigate.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was investigating Title VII complaints, which is about 75% of my job.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then went through a tragedy.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: My husband was killed.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just felt like I couldn't be the shining light.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was giving presentations, trying to inspire and encourage people.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the company was so wonderful and gave me an opportunity in HR, which was still people-facing, but not people-facing in terms of 200 people at one time.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: So continued to do workplace investigations in that role.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then as soon as this person had the opportunity to hire an investigator, I went right back.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: I went full circle.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do when it's time to, if you have the luxury of quote unquote punching out of the job at the end of the day, what do you do to just distress?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten really good at shutting it off.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm currently working part-time, which helps.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of corporate America should go to a 30-hour week.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: I swear by it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have a dog, I have grandchildren, I have volunteer opportunities.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: I volunteer a lot in different areas.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: So those are all distractions from it.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just learned, I think, over time not to let it eat me up.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's too distracting.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly reducing my hours from full-time to part-time and feeling the physical release in that of not being so wed to my work has just it's helped me mentally really create that balance or draw boundaries to have that balance.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: What's one lesson that you've learned the hard way, whether it's professionally speaking or personally speaking?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've always looked back and thought I wish I had a less dysfunctional situation when I came of age, that I could have just followed the normal, wonderful process of going to college right after high school, having that experience.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lesson, it's an experience where I learned that I needed to not repeat that for my own children.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that helped me really frame part of my parenting anyway.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I am so filled with joy that my children did have that path.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: They enjoyed their college years, they spent some time working and enjoying their income, and now they have families of their own.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it there's just nothing like looking back on that and thinking, okay, a life well lived, it feels like.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not done.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not done yet.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not done.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I've not done.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not done.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you have a lot of investigations under your belt.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: You have a lot to go.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I left the role as the first role I had in the helpline world in the investigation world and moved to the DI manager role, I did a tally of how many cases I'd reviewed, touched, or investigated.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were almost 900 cases over three and a half year period.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many I've investigated since then, but probably, oh no, maybe 100.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Might have to at least go back and do account.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody's thinking about entering this field, what would you tell them?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: But something that they should know.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: They should know that it's important to have a high level of integrity.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to be self-aware.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And people who aren't self-aware don't know that they're not self-aware.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that takes some work.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody really wanted to do this, I am a firm believer in therapy and I do that.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not always to address a problem, but it's a great way to become more aware.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Doing 360s with people, with your friends, with family, with people that are going to be courageous enough to give you feedback.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a really important part of the role because I'm impacting people in a really significant way.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm impacting people who are scared.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they're not an accused person, they're a witness and they they're facing this investigator.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my gosh, what's the fallout going to be?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly for a reported party or a complaintant, just there needs to be that some level of engagement that's caring and showing concern for them.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we are so grateful to you for joining us today.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we always close by inducting our guests into the hall of the brave and the bold.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: So consider yourself inducted.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: I am so angry.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for this week's confession.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got a workplace confession of your own, we're all ears.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Hit us up at our email address.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.