Episode 410:The Anatomy of an EEOC Age Discrimination Complaint

Voice Over: You’re about to listen to another episode of What The Hell Just Happened?! Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss and sometimes even solve some interesting HR problems. 

Paul: And… I’m gonna go off the rails sometimes and talk about whatever I want. 

 

Paul: I don’t know if everybody heard that or not that the audience just applauded one…

 

CeCe: [laughing] 

 

Paul: One time.

 

CeCe: One single time. 

 

Paul: Yeah. I want to welcome everybody to today’s podcast. What The Hell Just Happened in and in most instances, we bring in the catchphrase in HR. What The Hell Just Happened in HR? I’m joined by CeCe today. CeCe, you’ve been on several podcasts with me. For everybody listening, CeCe is the HR manager of HR people. She’s got one of the toughest jobs, I think, in the United States –

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: Because everybody who works for CEDR also understands employment law. I mean, all the way down to the people who answer the phones have much more knowledge than the average person. 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: And so CeCe has to manage the people who help other people manage the HR and it’s a tough thing. And I always love having you on the show, CeCe, because you bring some kind of different perspective to HR in general. And I know this time we’re going to talk about something that just happened with the EEOC, which for everybody who’s listening – By the way, CeCe, welcome to the show.

 

CeCe: [laughing] Thanks for having me, Paul.

 

Paul: I’m sorry. I just started rolling and okay, so the EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and they’re in charge of enforcing a certain set of federal rules, regulations and laws. 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: They can bring lawsuits if they choose to. In a general way, an EEOC lawsuit works if someone brings a complaint to the EEOC and it may not necessarily turn into anything. 

 

CeCe: Right.

 

Paul: The EEOC looks at it. The EEOC may do an investigation. And then the EEOC may decide to prosecute the case itself. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: It can’t take it out of the complainants hands. They issue what is known as a right to sue letter, which doesn’t mean anything in and of itself. It just means the complaint went through the EEOC. So if we’re going to go down the nerd, we’re going down the HR nerd hole here. At the bottom of this is, is that in most instances, if you’re covered by the EEOC or you’re covered by a version of the EEOC that the state may have. 

 

CeCe: Right. 

 

Paul: You are required to take your complaint to them first. You can’t just go straight to court. Now, that’s not the case in every instance. If you have less than 15 employees, the EEOC can’t really do anything to you. But many states have their own version of these laws, and they have lowered what we call the threshold below 15 employees. Right? 

 

CeCe: Right. 

 

Paul: Phew. I hope that was a good enough explanation. So the EEOC puts out, they put out press releases.

 

CeCe: Exactly.

 

Paul: And they’re kind of letting us know what they’re up to, what they’re focused on, what they care about. And sometimes the press release is just to say, “Hey, you guys, we’ve decided this thing or we’ve redefined this thing, and you need to pay attention and follow the rule.” In other instances, they’re releasing an announcement that they brought a lawsuit. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: All right. So I’m going to backpedal just a little bit. Once you get the right to sue letter to a complainant, they can then choose to do nothing. The complainant can do nothing at all.

 

CeCe: Uh hmm.

 

Paul: The complainant can hire an attorney and the attorney can use what the EEOC did or did not find and they can bring the lawsuit themselves and/or the EEOC may step up. Usually it’s instances of really kind of high profile.

 

CeCe: Yeah. Or when it’s pretty cut and dry.

 

Paul: Or it’s terrible. 

 

CeCe: Yes. 

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: Yeah. Somebody’s really kind of messed up.

 

CeCe: And usually they seek a settlement first.

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

CeCe: And then it’s up to the employer as to whether or not they want to settle or they decide that they want to go to court and they want to fight it.

 

Paul: You know, one of the things that I often say, I bring about, so I’m going to HR nerd myself just a little bit here. One of the values of having really good policies and good HR practices in place is that you can help the EEOC actually help you. So when they send a letter saying this person has said X, Y and Z and they’ve said that you terminated them or you took some adverse action against them because of some protected status, your best defense against that is, first to have a policy that’s clear. 

 

CeCe: Yep. 

 

Paul: That addresses that issue. That’s the first step. The EEOC, when they see that, they’re like, “Oh, these people actually understand what the rules are.”

 

CeCe: Right.

 

Paul: So we need to take a maybe a little bit different tack towards investigating this. And then the second thing is, is that you can show perhaps alternative reasons. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: That you took the steps you took. 

 

Cece: Right. 

 

Paul: That the accusation is not entirely true, which takes me to the first point. I know CeCe. 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: I’m like taking over here, but I love this subject because it’s all nerdy. The ‘But For’ rule. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: Remember, we talked about this once before?

 

CeCe: We did.

 

Paul: Do you remember how I explained that? Because I don’t remember how I explained it.

 

CeCe: [heavy sigh] Yeah.

 

Paul: Well, it’s unique to what we’re going to talk about today.

 

CeCe: To age discrimination. 

 

Paul: To age discrimination. 

 

CeCe: Right.  I mean, it’s kind of just a different burden of proof that they have to have.

 

Paul: Much higher. Yeah.

 

CeCe: Versus other types of discrimination. You don’t…That threshold is not the same.

 

Paul: Right. So when it comes to age discrimination, you almost have to prove that ‘But For’ everything else that could have been going on, it was age discrimination. 

 

CeCe: Exactly. 

 

Paul: It was very specific to what they were doing. And I think you’ve brought us two instances that the EEOC is pointing out that meet their ‘But For’ rule.

 

CeCe: Yes, exactly.

 

Paul: So what was the first one that they wanted everybody to know about?

 

CeCe: So the first one, it was a candidate. So not all of the same rules apply to your employees and your candidates. 

 

Paul: Good thing to know. 

 

CeCe: So the candidate applied for the job, went through the process. The employer informed the candidate that they were seeking more junior candidates, which is code. It can be coded.

 

Paul: Yep. Code language.

 

CeCe: Yeah. [laughing]

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

CeCe: And then they ultimately ended up filling the role with a younger person. And then the other piece of it, which I’m sure you know, all the evidence stacks up, right? 

 

Paul: It layers.

 

CeCe: So, yeah, they had also told the candidate that the salary that they were seeking was too high. I think to justify them to say that they wanted somebody with less experience. 

 

Paul: Uh hmm.

 

CeCe: But ultimately that younger person with less experience, they end up paying more than the candidate had asked for.

 

Paul: And that may have been the nail in the coffin.

 

CeCe: Probably.

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: They might have gotten away with, “Well, we’re looking for someone who’s got a little less experience.” It’s kind of…Look, sometimes I think that this is true. I mean, I’m going to be careful here. 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: Gotta be careful in how I say this. Look, if I’m applying for a job at your business. I know what I’m getting myself into. I know how old I am. I’ll even share this. Oh, wow. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story. 

 

CeCe: [laughing] 

 

Paul: It was a long time ago, and this is what got me into HR. I owned a live music venue and a management company touring bands.

 

CeCe: Uh huh.

 

Paul: CeCe’s like, “I’ve heard this story.”

 

CeCe: [laughing] Okay Dad.

 

Paul: Okay Dad. [laughing] I ended up with about 60 employees, and I also ended up when I sold those businesses, the main reason I did was because it was driving me insane to have 60 employees. 

 

CeCe: Uh hmm.

 

Paul: I just couldn’t figure out…I ran a good company. People liked me. That doesn’t mean that my life was good and that it was easy to manage people. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: So I’m trying to remember now why I brought this up. Where…I went backwards. Oh! Oh! Oh!

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: So when I sold the businesses for pennies, everybody, when I sold the businesses what I desired was to take a break from the world. And I wanted to take a couple of years off and just kind of go follow a couple of dreams and one of them was faking my way into a chef’s job, which I did. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: It’s wonderful how –

 

CeCe: You’ve had many lifetimes. [laughing]

 

Paul: The universe manifested that for me. It’s like I really wanted it, and that’s not what I set out to do. I just made it clear to myself that’s what I wanted. And somehow those circumstances put me there, but that’s –

 

CeCe: That’s how I got into HR, actually.

 

Paul: That’s how you kinda got into HR? Okay.

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: So kind of that’s what happened to me, too. But one of the things when I contacted them, which was one of the first eras when you could, like, contact someone to get a job. So ‘them’ is a kids camp in Colorado, the Colorado Mountain Ranch.

 

Cece: Oh.

 

Paul: Been there for decades. Beautiful family runs it. They service the Boulder area. If you’re in Boulder and you’ve got kids and you’d like for them to get shipped up a mountain and come back exhausted and pass out at the end of the day, I highly recommend the Colorado Mountain Ranch. [laughing]

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: It’s a day camp. When I contacted them, they replied back and basically in a very nice way said, “You realize you’re 43 years old, right?” 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: They didn’t say that directly –

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: But, so this speaks to my concern. They needed a reality check because all of their counselors and everybody are 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24. They’re college kids. It’s summer. It’s their summer job. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: And they’re like, “How’s this old guy going to fit in?” And I had to assure them that my employees were all 18, 19, 20, 25, you know, everybody working around me and they immediately accepted that and they weren’t trying to discriminate against me for age, but they had a real concern because you live at camp. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: And you’re not the boss of everybody around you when you’re a counselor. And I was coming in as a counselor. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: I eventually got moved into the kitchen whereby my bus driving skills and my kitchen skills together made me pretty, you know, made me pretty – 

 

CeCe: That’s cool.

 

Paul:  I was highly desired. 

 

CeCe: [laughing] 

 

Paul: Okay, so I just wanted to share that story to say that sometimes there can be a legitimate concern. 

 

CeCe: Sure. Yeah.

 

Paul: But they didn’t say, “Oh, don’t talk to this guy because he’s too old because he won’t fit in.”

 

CeCe: Yeah, but, yeah, you’re right. In that circumstance, it’s understandable. I mean, especially when you’re talking about an adult working with minors and then, you know, you get into a very different age range than early twenties with late teens. 

 

Paul: Right. 

 

CeCe: That can be…I can understand how that could be a concern. And then just like you said, the general, how is this person going to vibe with the rest of them? Because you’re not, you weren’t there to be the boss.

 

Paul: But you got to be careful that you’re, that you create some kind of an, I’m going to use a word called ‘pretext’ –

 

CeCe: Exactly.

 

Paul: Whereby you have some opinion that old people aren’t fast enough, smart enough, they’re not going to fit in because your team’s, perhaps for whatever reason, all younger people, which by the way, if I look at your company from the outside and this is the problem.

 

CeCe: Uh hmm.

 

Paul: As a company, you have to be careful about hindsight. 

 

CeCe: Yup. 

 

Paul: So you said things stack up. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: So we could say, or someone could say, we don’t discriminate based off of all the things like whether or not you’re a man or a woman, whatever your religion is, whatever the color of your skin is, your race, religion, all those things. But we always have hindsight, and we can come in and argue for the EEOC and come in and say, “Okay, what is the makeup? Interesting. It’s all white men between the ages of 22 and 35. I believe that we may have a pattern here.”

 

CeCe: Right.

 

Paul: “Let’s go find the person who’s doing the hiring. Oh, look, they are a white man between the ages of…” So – 

 

CeCe: [laughing] Yeah. 

 

Paul: If you…You just have to be careful with hindsight. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: And, then I think, really, if I give you something practical, we all have preconceived notions of who’s the right or type.

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: And as an employer, you can do a disservice to yourself. By following that, you can actually pass up on the perfect person because of your preconceived notion of what is the right person for this job.

 

CeCe: Yeah. I mean, I think that we’d be lying if any of us said that when we go to hire, we have some sort of vision of what the person is.

 

Paul: Mm hmm.

 

CeCe: Whether that’s their personality, their age range, whether they’re a man or a woman. We’re human. And so that kind of vision pops in your head. And so as people who are responsible for those processes, you just have to be aware of where your own biases or where your own preferences are. 

 

Paul: Uh hmm.

 

CeCe: And then you know, use tools like with your questions or other testing for skills and things like that to make sure that you’re using objective criteria and not just that vision that you have in your head to make decisions.

 

Paul: I really cringe because, I mean, I’ve had managers here say, “I was kind of thinking this was going to be a female that’s going to fill this position.” And I’m and that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

 

CeCe: Yup.

 

Paul: Is that you got to, as an employer, you have another set of parameters around this. You can make different decisions in other areas based on whatever your pretext or your feelings are.

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: And there’s nothing wrong with gut, you know what I mean? 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: Like, you’ve got a gut feeling about someone, but it doesn’t…It’s not, oftentimes, not going to get you a great outcome.

 

CeCe: Yeah. I mean and then on the flip side, there have been times where I’ve got that gut thing and I’m like, but I can’t figure out what it is.

 

Paul: Mm hmm.

 

CeCe: More often than not, it’s been correct. But if I can’t figure out what the thing is that my gut is saying, “This is off,” and all of my objective criteria is there? That’s a tricky place to be because if you just rely on the gut thing, you can cause some disparate impact there and end up creating biases that you didn’t even intend to.

 

Paul: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I used to go with gut a lot because, you know, people would come in and they interview for a job behind the bar or a bouncer’s job or anything. And I’m going to tell you, one of the things I did in one of my clubs was I put women at the door.

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: The thinking was, is that they would be able to escalate…I’m sorry, de-escalate a situation – 

 

CeCe: [laughing] Yeah.

 

Paul: And that perhaps guys would be less likely to get in an altercation with one another if a woman stepped in. 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: Okay, so here’s my bias. 

 

CeCe: [laughing] Uh huh.

 

Paul: The women that we hired tended to be more aggressive and get more in the face of people trying to get them, not trying to be…Like it was funny.

 

CeCe: Oh, that is funny. You see, my brain went to a different place, and that was that –

 

Paul: I was putting them at risk?

 

CeCe: Yeah. That some men would feel more comfortable being verbally abusive or, you know, confronting a woman, than somebody who they know can physically confront them in a different way.

 

Paul: Actually, that was not the case. This is in the South. I don’t know where, you know, I know the rest of the world is going kind of crazy, but in the South, we don’t…There’s a certain way. You’re taught, “Don’t talk to your mother that way.”

 

CeCe: Okay.

 

Paul: Which is  –

 

CeCe: So the cultural context made it so you – 

 

Paul: There’s a cultural context.

 

CeCe: That you have that idea. Okay.

 

Paul: If a guy hit a woman in front of you, you could deck him.

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: And the judge would be like, “You shouldn’t have hit her in front of him. You’re…Welcome to North Carolina dude.” 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: So, okay, I went out of left field there.

 

CeCe: Is North Carolina the South?

 

Paul: North Carolina…You take that back.

 

CeCe: [laughing] Did I step in something I didn’t mean to there? [laughing]

 

Paul: You did. I need you to immediately. This is a remedial. This is a corrective action. I need you to go study what the Mason-Dixon line is and where it is.

 

CeCe: Okay. Geography is not my strong suit.

 

Paul: Well, we are North Carolina, which makes us better than South Carolina. I’m sorry, listeners. 

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: By the way, we’re in Tucson, Arizona. This is the South, too, by the way. 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: It’s just a different South. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: All right. So I told the story. I told the story. The women. Anyway, my preconceived notion was that women would not be as aggressive, maybe not as aggressive. Guys, so they countered that the guys didn’t want to confront the woman, like swinging out or anything.

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: The women countered with, we’re even more aggressive in your face and we’re not going to put up with your crap than the guys who were bouncing. 

 

CeCe: Okay.

 

Paul: Oh, gosh. That was a long ways for that HR lesson. 

 

CeCe: [laughing] 

 

Paul: So the EEOC first brought the first case they released. We just discussed that basically the people were trying to use code and pretext to not hire someone who was in their fifties.

 

CeCe: Yeah. And in their press release, they said that there has been precedent set. The courts recognize that euphemisms like –

 

Paul: Too senior.

 

CeCe: More senior or more junior or overqualified is a violation.

 

Paul: Recent graduate.

 

CeCe: Yes! Yes.

 

Paul: All of those things, even though a recent graduate could be 63 years old.

 

CeCe: It can be, but the impact is likely that you’re screening out older people.

 

Paul: Yeah. And then what was the second one that they just gave us some guidance on?

 

CeCe: The second one was an employee approaching a 65th birthday and the management at the company starts asking her, “When are you going to retire?” She says she doesn’t want to. They’re asking her why. So being kind of pestering and repeatedly coming to her once she turned 65. She verified, “No. I’m not retiring right now.” So they eliminated her role, they said, “due to economic uncertainty.”

 

Paul: Which is, which is cover. You can actually do that. 

 

CeCe: Sure. Yeah.

 

Paul: But you probably shouldn’t be pairing that with lots of talk about, “When are you going to retire?”

 

CeCe: Well that and then they turned around and refilled the role with someone in their thirties.

 

Paul: Replaced her. So it wasn’t economic, it was “we need to get you out.” And so they made two really bad mistakes as managers.

 

CeCe: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Paul: And so if you’re this, you know, if I’m in an organization, running it, and I’ve got managers who do something like this, they’re either not been trained.

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: Or they need to go. 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: Yeah. This is not the way, this is not the way to handle this.

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: And I think probably we had an untrained manager. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: Who didn’t have any kind of a check. So they took some steps and did some things without checking with an HR expert of any type. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: And who would have put the brakes on this immediately.

 

CeCe: Yeah. And this was a manufacturing environment, so I’m guessing that, you know, they probably were not producing in the same way. And so we see this in all kinds of offices where the productivity is maybe slowing down.

 

Paul: That’s a different story.

 

CeCe: And so and that’s the thing. So if they had dealt with that issue?

 

Paul: Uh huh.

 

CeCe: They could have done this legally and gotten this person out of the company if that was –

 

Paul: If it was necessary.

 

CeCe: Where they needed to go. 

 

Paul: Yeah.

 

CeCe: But I think that they probably thought that this was an easier route to take. Instead of documenting the corrective action and talking directly about the performance but – 

 

Paul: Right. 

 

CeCe: And unfortunately, they got themselves in some hot water.

 

Paul: So they, the EEOC, investigated and as you said, it’s the layers that they find. So the first layer is, is that there’s some kind of you know, they’re able to confirm that there was some talk leading up to like, “When are you going to retire? What are your plans? How long, how much longer do you plan on working?”

 

CeCe: Uh huh.

 

Paul: You know, those types of conversations were being had. 

 

CeCe: Right. 

 

Paul: And then, as you said, circumstantially, the next layer was they actually eliminated the position and within that layer are the facts. Which is you didn’t actually eliminate the position, you eliminated the person.

 

CeCe: Right.

 

Paul: You refilled the position and you refilled it with someone younger. So both of those in my estimation, meet the “But For.” But for anything else, you really did age discriminate here. 

 

CeCe: Right. 

 

Paul: They could have been doing a lot of other things and now they would have trouble with the “But For” argument. The other things were, as you stated, documenting that the person’s not producing.

 

CeCe: Right.

 

Paul: Documenting where they’re coming up short and really taking it head on and by the way, doing the right thing, which is give the employee an opportunity to improve and understand what they’re not getting right.

 

CeCe: Yeah. Uh huh.

 

Paul: And in some instances, if you do this in a really healthy, constructive way and you’ve got a good, really kind of a great environment where you work, employees faced with this come back and say, “I’m just having trouble.”

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: “I know I’m slowing things down.”

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: “I’d like to talk about retirement.”

 

CeCe: Yeah. Yeah. You put them in a place where they can have some self awareness rather than be on the defensive.

 

Paul: Constantly on the defensive.

 

CeCe: And that can be a much more productive way to go.

 

Paul: Yeah, it can be, but it takes a whole lot of work – 

 

CeCe: A lot of effort.

 

Paul: To get your managers and your teams to enter into those kinds of conversations. Yeah, I have a story. I’m not going to go into it too deep, but: multi practice, several locations, new organization, didn’t have good HR in place. An associate doctor who they tried to argue didn’t have any power. 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm.

 

Paul: But you can’t argue that if the perception of the employee is that they have power and that associate doctor wasn’t getting along with a long term employee. He was placed in the practice kind of the de facto manager, even though he didn’t have any experience or anything. And next thing you know, he’s getting in arguments and he’s saying out loud to the employee in front of other employees, “I will be so glad when you retire.” 

 

CeCe: Oof.

 

Paul: “I just don’t feel I can get anything done. You block everything I do.” 

 

CeCe: Mm hmm. 

 

Paul: That last part is okay. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Paul: That’s something that you can talk about with someone. It’s the beginning of that conversation that got him in trouble. And the EEOC took the case and went in for $350,000 settlement. They wouldn’t settle. The EEOC ended up extracting almost double that in the end. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: And then they paid all these legal fees. And, you know, so look, if you’re out there and you’re in a multi practice situation? You don’t know what’s going on in these practices. Your managers need extra levels of training. 

 

CeCe: Yes.

 

Paul: And I would encourage you not to have associate doctors actually running the practices by themselves. They need, they either need the training you would get to managers or something along those lines.

 

CeCe: We’ve talked about that a lot on this podcast. That’s a lot of times where things kind of go wonky is that that information’s not being filtered the right way.

 

Paul: Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And we could, we could spend a whole podcast on that. Okay, so I think we covered a little bit of the “But For” rule. We’ve told a couple of good stories. The EEOC, as we’ve given you guys a couple of good examples of why you need to be careful around age discrimination. Look, in the end, it’s illegal to force someone out because of their age. 

 

CeCe: Uh huh.

 

Paul: There are methods that you can use to discuss this with an employee, which include severance packages or, as you explained to me CeCe before we got started, offering something for them to retire, which puts them in a better position. 

 

CeCe: Right. 

 

Paul: There are ways that you can approach this issue.  But most states have kind of, they really outlaw the practice of trying to force someone out – 

 

CeCe: Yeah.

 

Paul: Because they’re reaching what you perceive as retirement age. So let’s talk about perception.

 

CeCe: Okay.

 

Paul: Before I…CeCe what were you going to say?

 

CeCe: I was just going to say it doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about retirement with employees either, especially if they bring it up first. 

 

Paul: Yep. 

 

CeCe: You can certainly say, “Hey, you mentioned that you’re hoping to be able to retire in the next couple of years. What are your plans around that?” and have a constructive conversation to plan for it. 

 

Paul: If they mention it.

 

CeCe: Yeah, if yes, if they mention it. So I don’t want people to leave with the message that they can’t ever have these conversations. It just has to be that you’re not prompting it just because of the employee’s age.

 

Paul: Right. Yeah. You’re not making the decision for them. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: You know, another thing that I kind of want to just insert here right at the end CeCe, is statistically, even though you’re not supposed to force people out –

 

CeCe: Uh huh.

 

Paul: But statistically, what we’re seeing when you use hindsight, kind of look at the country, is that people who are reaching the age of, people are retiring between the ages of 62, 63, 64.

 

CeCe: Uh huh.

 

Paul: And more and more that idea that “I could retire at that age because I would have enough of a nest egg.” More and more that is not true. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. That’s true. Absolutely.

 

Paul: People need to work a few more years in order to be able to be, you know, safe in their retirement and to have the extra funds that they need to to get through it. Nonetheless…So where we’re had what we have here is a budding of the heads where managers and companies are saying, we want these people out and these people that they’re talking about actually need and want to work a few more a few more years in order to be financially stable. So it’s a competing, it’s kind of this competing thing that we can see out there. And, you know, during the pandemic a lot of folks in their sixties, late fifties, sixties and even mid-sixties who were out of the workforce found the need to come back to it and chose it. So I think we have kind of a two trains on a collision course here. There’s what employers perceive that they need and want and what workers actually do need. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. 

 

Paul: And I believe that the EEOC will continue to enforce these rules and be looking for this sort of thing.

 

CeCe: Yeah. I mean, I think the evidence of them announcing both of these on the same day shows that that’s kind of something that they’ve got their eye on.

 

Paul: You know, I think that’s a good place to end this. 

 

CeCe: Okay.

 

Paul:  It’s a really good place to end this. 

 

CeCe: Okay.

 

Paul: CeCe, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Little HR nerding here. What The Hell Just Happened in HR is that a couple of different businesses really didn’t handle issues that are handled…They could be handed? I was trying to make up a new word.

 

CeCe: [laughing]

 

Paul: Handleable? Handed? Handed it? Okay, I can’t make up a new word today. It’s not going to work.

 

CeCe: [laughing] Usually I can help you, but I’m lost on this one. [laughing]

 

Paul: [laughing] Can’t help me with that. But be careful out there, everybody. 

 

CeCe: Yeah. CeCe, thanks.

 

Paul: Thanks Paul.

 

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