Episode 405: Considering Hiring a Minor for the Summer?

Amanda: Have you guys heard of the conspiracy theory about Crumbl Cookies? [laughing] First off, have either of you eaten at Crumbl Cookies?

Kristen: Yes.

Amanda: Yes?

Kristen: They are delicious.

Amanda: So good. Have you?

Paul: I didn’t even know it existed. We have one here in Tucson?

Amanda: I think so?

Kristen: There’s a couple of them actually.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. So, Crumbl, I mean you might have –

Paul: Hold on a second.

[laughing]

Paul: Note to self.

Amanda: [laughing] You might see them around town there. Like, it’s very known for the, like, pink branding.

Paul: No!

Amanda: There’s like pink Crumbl vans, and then the boxes are just like beautiful pink boxes and the cookies are massive. They’re huge.

Paul: Oh.

Amanda: And they’re stacked with, like, all sorts of goodies, you know.

Paul: Like, pulled pork?

Amanda: Sure. [laughing] I’m sure they’ve made that one.

Paul: Do they have pulled pork cookies?

Amanda: [laughing] No!

Kristen: We could put in a request. [laughing]

Amanda: You should submit that as a request. [laughing]

Paul: She’s a vegetarian by the way.

[laughing]

Paul: She’s like, [high pitched voice] “Oh…”

Amanda: Oh, yum.

Paul: Oh, yum.

Kristen: They do have rotating flavors.

Amanda: They do.

Paul: They do have a cookie…They have a cookie place downtown that will deliver a cookie to you.

Amanda: That’s Insomnia Cookies, isn’t it?

Paul: Yeah. They’ll deliver until like four in the morning.

Amanda: Yeah. Crumbl’s much different than that in that their cookies are like meals. They’re huge and they’re like 10,000 calories a cookie.

Paul: Therefore, the pulled pork cookie.

Amanda: Yeah. [laughing] But there’s this conspiracy theory, this is totally unrelated to the actual topic, but there’s this conspiracy theory that they’re just using like regular boxed cookie dough that you buy at the store and then just cooking that and adding the stuff on top.

Paul: I think that that’s…as long as I like it…

Amanda: It’s feasible!

Kristen: Right?

Amanda: Apparently the Internet’s really mad about it. They’re like, “Oh my God, I pay so much for these Crumbl Cookies. I could just make them at home.”

Paul: Well, what do they think flour costs?

[laughing]

Amanda: It’s very true!

Paul: I mean, it’s not like Crumbl Cookies is going to find a different flour?

Amanda: Yeah. Yup.

Paul: Yeah. They’re all using the same thing.

Kristen: Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah. But I decided, you know, you brought up Crumbl, and you can go into why, but it just was the first thing I thought of.

Paul: Yeah.

Amanda: [laughing]

Paul: Spoiler alert, that bag of cookies that you purchase at a grocery store, from a former chef here.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: That bag of cookies that you purchased for, say, right now, $4.50. They got about $0.12 in that.

Amanda: Mm hmm.

Paul: And most of that’s in the bag.

Kristen: Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

Amanda: That’s pretty wild.

Paul: They’re not spending a ton of money on the ingredients.

Kristen: But you know, if you make it yourself it may not turn out so well. You never know! [laughing]

Paul: It sounds like someone has a story to tell.

Amanda & Kristen: [laughing]

Kristen: Well that’s just my personal experience. But Crumbl has a story that hasn’t turned out so well for them as well.

Paul: Oh no! What did Crumbl do?

Kristen: They got in trouble with the Department of Labor.

Paul: Uh oh!

Kristen: Child labor laws.

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: Wait a minute. I want kids making my cookies, don’t I?

[laughing]

Kristen: Doesn’t it sound cute? But no.

[laughing]

Paul: Adorable!

Kristen: They can during certain hours and you know, there’s rules around having children –

Amanda: What they do.

Kristen: And people under 18.

Paul: [sighs] Okay, tell me what they did.

Amanda: Did they make them work until like 3 a.m. and not give them breaks or water or bathroom breaks?

Kristen: So I don’t think it was quite that extreme –

Amanda: [laughing]

Kristen: But it was…there were some hour violations because there are rules about when people under, minors under 18, can work.

Paul: Okay.

Kristen: There were also some rules about hazardous things. So baking, pulling things out of ovens.

Paul: Uh huh.

Kristen: There’s rules about what age you can be to do that sort of thing.

Paul: Okay.

Kristen: So, they got in trouble in lots of different places for a few different [laughing] infractions there. Ended up costing them about $57,000.

Amanda: Oof!

Paul: Oh, that’s not too bad.

Kristen: Not too bad I suppose, but there –

Paul: I think they probably made out pretty good on that.

Kristen: They’re not a huge company –

Paul: Right.

Kristen: So you know.

Amanda: Yeah.

Kristen: Probably still hurt a little bit.

Paul: I have a confession. My first…I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, although I do want some details on the…We’ll get into the minutia here. A little bit of my history. I’m from eastern North Carolina. My dad was in the Air Force. Both of my mom’s parents and my dad’s parents were farmers.

Amanda: Hmm.

Paul: And so from a very early age, one of my earliest memories is being on one of those farms and with my dad being in the Air Force and being stationed away, oftentimes places where we couldn’t go, back then you couldn’t go with them like the Arctic Circle. He was there for a year. By the way, he came back with gray hair and I thought his hair froze.

[laughing]

Paul: So that’s a whole other story. Okay. So anyway…

Amanda: That’s amazing.

Paul: No kidding, I don’t see him for a year and he comes back in the door and he’s just gray.

Amanda: Totally gray.

Paul: He’s probably like 30 years old, which my sister unfortunately inherited from him. Sorry, sis. Anyway, where was I? Oh, grandparents.

Amanda: Uh huh.

Paul: Farm confession. My first record of being paid. So, paying Social Security taxes, is at nine years old.

Amanda: Oh, my gosh!

Paul: One of my grandparents taught me how to drive a tractor, and I was pulling what they call trailer…tractor…trucks. They call them trucks, but they’re actually little trailers. Both grandparents owned tobacco farms that had all kinds of other things going on, on them. But in the summer, it was very, very common for all of the children in the community to be working on one of these farms. So even if you weren’t, you know, if your family wasn’t a farming family, a lot of kids would come into these farms and work from age 12, 13. And if you were a member of the family, as soon as you could do anything, you were a part of it. You know, whether you were pretending to work when you were seven or whether or not you were working. And I can just tell you that a nine year old, on the highway, pulling a trailer behind the tractor turned out just fine.

Kristen: [laughing]

Amanda: Solid.

Paul: All the time.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: For day in, day out, for the whole summer. I mean, there was a lot of…I almost flipped it over once by myself.

[laughing]

Amanda: Oo! Fun.

Kristen: Almost.

Paul: But I learned.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: I did put diesel in the gas tractor. It’s the first time I heard my grandfather drop an F-bomb because that’s not a good thing. I was just trying to help.

[laughing]

Paul: So I just want to make the case that coming from that background, working on a farm where it’s just dangerous. [laughing]

Amanda: Uh hmm.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: You know, mechanisms and all sorts of things going on, what I learned was, was to work with those sort of things and be safe.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Paul: You know, they just didn’t just put me on the tractor and go –

Amanda: Say, “Good luck!”

Paul: You know, there was at least –

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: Three or 4 hours of instruction.

[laughing]

Paul: So anyway.

Kristen: Well, in an agricultural settings, there’s not, the restrictions are different.

Paul: They do change.

Kristen: So.

Paul: But I think they’re, they don’t, it’s for family. It’s what you do with family.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: You know, you can not pay family minimum wage.

Amanda: Yeah? Wow.

Paul: There’s all kinds of rules and there were, you could not do that. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I have a really different perspective because I hear a bunch of what I think is interesting conversation going on where legislators are trying to pass laws that allow kids to work. And of course, where it comes up is they’re like, “Well, they’re putting them in meatpacking plants.”

Amanda: Uh huh.

Paul: Well, you know, I get that argument, you know, I do understand that, but I know that there are tons of ways that kids can work.

Amanda: Oh, for sure.

Paul: Yeah. And I shared one of these stories one time and I think what I put up was that my parents said, you know, this summer I think I was about 13 or 14. I was like, “I want to work on the farm.” And, you know, you get better pay or whatever it is. And my parents said, “Well, whatever you earn there, half of it, you can do whatever you want to with it, and the other half goes towards your clothes and we will match the other half,” because at that point they were saying it was a big deal. I’m not going to go with you to get your clothes. I’m going to go drop you off –

Amanda: You can go shopping!

Paul: And you can go buy with your own money –

Kristen: Independence!

Amanda: Yeah!

[laughing]

Paul: You know, and it was like there was a lot to go with that. And so that was a really growing up moment. And they were teaching me how to manage my own –

Amanda: For sure.

Paul: Money. And of course, you know, the half that I can do whatever I want to with I spent on barbecue potato chips, but we don’t need to get into that.

[laughing]

Kristen: Yeah. Similarly, I worked for my parents when I was 12 years old.

Paul: There you go.

Kristen: So yeah, and it gave me that chance to get the “I quit/You’re fired” thing out of my system a few times [laughing] in a safe place –

Amanda: [laughing] Yeah.

Kristen: You know, so as I got older I could control that.

Paul: So you could control that. [laughing] “This is stupid. I don’t want to do it.”

Kristen: Yeah. “I quit. I’m done!”

Paul: Well, you know, I remember my parent coming home and telling my parents I didn’t want to work in a 100 degree field, you know, that’s not what I said. I was like, “This job is stupid. I don’t want to do it any more.” By the way, just coated in tobacco, just…look, I’m not saying it was…Parts of it were not good.

Amanda: Hmm. Yeah.

Paul: I’m not disagreeing with that. But it was just how it was. But yeah, I didn’t have the tools, but they would say, “But you committed. You told them you were going to do this and so are you going to go back on your word?” Again, another little opportunity for a life lesson at a very early age. And quite frankly, it was really cool to be able to go in and then at the end, my mom said, “No, son, you can keep all your money. We’re going to just give you some money. You go in and shop for your clothes.”

Amanda: Hmm.

Kristen: Very nice.

Paul: She gave me that because I think I may have made the right decision when she was like, “You can’t quit.”

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: “You told them you were going to be there and you gotta get up and go do it.”

Amanda: Yeah. So sure, there’s a ton of value in, like, having –

Paul: Do I sound like I’m 60? Like I’m 61?

[laughing]

Amanda: But what did they do that was just so, you know?

Kristen: So in their case, they had, like I said, it was varying issues because it was across 11 different locations –

Paul: Okay.

Kristen: In different states and different states have different rules about when –

Amanda: Are they franchised?

Kristen: They are franchised.

Amanda: Okay so that’s –

Paul: Are they a franchised owned franchise or are they independent owner franchises? That’s a –

Kristen: Hmm. That’s a good question.

Paul: Yeah.

Kristen: I don’t know.

Paul: So for everybody out there, McDonald’s owns some of its McDonald’s stores and then some of its stores are owned by –

Amanda: Oh! I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.

Paul: Individuals. They’re still underneath the purview of the franchise but –

Amanda: So if they’re underneath the purview of the franchise, say, like that’s the situation with Crumbl, does that mean that they still have to follow corporate guidelines for most things? Or can they make independent decisions or…?

Paul: Yeah, they have to but then there’s this big argument. Well, the franchise owners like it when they have the individual franchises out there.

Amanda: Uh hmm.

Paul: So the people who own the main franchise, the big parent company, they like the individual franchises because in employment law and labor law, it often divorces them from the mistakes that the individual owners make inside their own franchises.

Amanda: Oh! That’s interesting. Okay.

Paul: There is a lot that’s been going on in the DOL for the last 12 years –

Amanda: Uh huh.

Paul: As it goes back and forth. It’s like, “No, McDonald’s. You’re,” (I’m using McDonald’s as an example.)

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: “No, you’re responsible for what goes into these.” And they’re like, “No, we’re not. They’re responsible for that.”

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: So just back and forth. Okay!

Amanda: [laughing]

Paul: So it doesn’t matter right now for the purpose of this. Several locations. So they’re all in one state?

Kristen: No, they’re in different states.

Paul: Okay, so different rules in different states. So some states might not care.

Kristen: Right.

Paul: Other states may have very, very strict rules when you can work, number of hours, what kind of supervision, what kind of work you can do.

Kristen: Right, exactly. So there are restrictions on hours during school time and during the summer.

Paul: Right.

Kristen: They’re a little bit expanded. But again, like I’m thinking of this in terms of some of our members, you know, they may have their own child or a friend’s child that is looking –

Amanda: Summer interns.

Kristen: Yeah. For the summer. They want to earn some extra money, get some job experience. And you think, “Okay, great, you know, we can have them do something in our office,” which you probably can, but you want to check on these child labor laws –

Paul: Right.

Kristen: And really consider what might be hazardous in your business.

Paul: So we don’t want like a nine year old standing on someone’s chest numbing up people.

Kristen: Right?! [laughing]

Amanda: That probably wouldn’t work.

Kristen: That might be a bad idea. [laughing]

Paul: Maybe at one of the Medispas was just, you know, injecting like…

Amanda: Lip filler, right?

[laughing]

Amanda: Oh, Lord.

Kristen: Yeah, there’s the obvious ‘no-nos’ and then there’s, you know, some things like you have to take in consideration HIPAA. Do you need to have them go through any training? Are they going to be seeing any personal health information that might be sensitive?

Paul: Are they going to be posting on their Instagram?

Amanda: Uh huh.

Kristen: Oh yeah, social media. One of the hazardous things they look at is radioactive substances and ionizing radiation.

Paul: Okay.

Amanda: Woah.

Kristen: So that may or may not be something present.

Paul: Probably not. For the most part.

Kristen: Maybe not. But, you know, basically you want to think about does somebody need training to use something because of safety? You know, because even if it’s not listed, let’s think about what happens if they break it? If they get hurt, you know?

Paul: Were the kids working in stores or were they working in manufacturing?

Amanda: Stores.

Kristen: I think they’re all stores. There’s no manufacturing. I think they’re in the store.

Paul: Do they make the cookies in the store?

Amanda: Yeah.

Kristen: Uh huh.

Paul: And so they were working around hot ovens.

Kristen: Hot ovens were some of them. Some were too late of hours.

Amanda: And just so you can see –

Kristen: Working early or working late.

Amanda: Crumbl Cookies!

Paul: Oh, my gosh.

Amanda: Look how delicious those look!

Kristen: Oh, the churro cookie.

Amanda: [laughing]

Kristen: Favorite. Absolutely the best.

Amanda: I had to bring it up. I had to show you just so you can know what I’m talking about.

Kristen: They’re so good.

Amanda: Now you know the magnitude of the situation.

Paul: Those little hands are doing important work.

[laughing]

Paul: That’s all I’m saying.

Kristen: They definitely have reduced their hours. I don’t know if this is in relationship to not having the child labor that can work late into the night.

Amanda: [laughing] Yeah, right?

Paul: I wonder what got them…Does anybody know what got them thinking that they would have kids working there? Does anyone know?

Amanda: Oh yeah. I don’t know.

Kristen: I don’t know.

Amanda: Probably just I mean…

Kristen: Wonder what started all of it?

Amanda: Was it kids like 16 or was it like what?

Kristen: As young as 14.

Amanda: Oh, wow!

Paul: So I don’t –

Kristen: It says it affected 46 employees. So they had quite a few.

Amanda: Oh okay. Wow.

Paul: They had quite a few at some locations.

Kristen: Uh huh.

Paul: Yeah. So wow. Yeah. You know, was there some kind of onus? Did somebody get hurt or was it just –

Amanda: Yeah, like what brought it up?

Kristen: You know, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know what started it. But I do know that the final ruling basically said “It is the responsibility,” I’m quoting actually –

Paul: Yup.

Kristen: “The responsibility of every employer who hires minors to understand child labor laws and comply with them or potentially face costly consequences.”

Paul: Right.

Amanda: Which is very true.

Kristen: So that’s really your big, like every state has their own specific laws. So there’s federal laws.

Paul: Right.

Kristen: But you want to check your state. There’s even, you can even pay young workers –

Paul: Less money.

Kristen: Yeah. Less money for the first 90 days.

Amanda: What?! You can?

Kristen: $4.25 an hour federally, but again, that’s a state, if your state has other requirements, you have to go with what that is.

Amanda: Wow.

Paul: And that’s for summer jobs. That’s what that first 90 days was designed to do was let a kid get out of school and go find a job and go get paid a little bit in order to do it.

Kristen: And good luck finding one that’ll work for $4.25 an hour.

Amanda: I know! My goodness. I never knew that was like a thing. Wow.

Kristen: [laughing] Yeah, yeah.

Paul: “You’ll work and you’ll work for whatever you get paid,” is what I would be told.

Kristen: Yeah, right?

Amanda: Same.

Paul: I. Wow.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: You know, I have mixed feelings here.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, I, you know, I don’t. I’m like all of you. I don’t want anyone, child or not, working in unsafe conditions –

Amanda: Sure.

Paul: I really don’t have a problem with a company who can really say, “Look, guys, you hit this button, it squirts the cookies out onto the sheet. You pick the sheet up, you put it in this thing, never reach in. You put these gloves on at the end, you pick this thing up – “

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: “You take these things off the sheet, you put them into the boxes. And we do these by the order. And your job is to do the following.” I don’t have a lot of problem with that.

Kristen: Right.

Paul: You know what I mean?

Amanda: Sure.

Paul: I think working in a cookie store, making cookies is like one of the safest things you could put someone to do.

Amanda: Yeah. I think my first job was at a bagel shop, you know, when I was 16.

Paul: Yeah.

Kristen: One of my first jobs was at a deli and I managed to cut myself instead of a carrot. So, you know, things can happen. [laughing]

Amanda: Nice.

Kristen: I was 14. [laughing]

Paul: Yeah and I don’t know, maybe they were handling knives and somebody cut themselves or something like that.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: But then again, you know, again, I learned the hard way, well, where wasps like to hang out inside of bundles of sticks that we used.

Kristen: Oh. [heavy sigh]

Amanda: Absolutely not.

Paul: You know, it took one time and it was a valuable lesson, but I didn’t lose a finger.

Amanda: That’s like that horribly sad movie where that little boy dies from the bee attack. What movie is that?

Kristen: Oh!

Amanda: My Girl?

Kristen: My Girl! Yeah. Macaulay Culkin, right?

Amanda: Yeah. Oof!

Paul: I didn’t see that.

Amanda: What? That’s like the most classic movie of all time. [laughing]

Paul: I don’t think so.

Kristen: I don’t know about that, but it is a classic. [laughing]

Amanda: No, that is a fact. That is not an opinion. [laughing]

Paul: I can’t watch movies where children get hurt or dogs.

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Paul: If I think the dog’s not going to make it? I’m out.

Kristen: Can’t finish the movie.

Paul: Yeah. I am out.

Amanda: It pulls on the heartstrings.

Kristen: It makes it hard. I have to skip the whole beginning of John Wick every time. [laughing]

Amanda: Oof. Yeah.

Paul: I can see that.

Kristen: Yeah, it’s rough.

Amanda: Well, I mean, moral of the story: Check the laws.

Kristen: Yeah. You know, check the laws. I mean, with your own kids, you do have some more leeway if it’s your own family, but there are still rules, so just. Just check them out, before you have somebody come in and work and potentially put other people at risk, themselves at risk, your business at risk.

Paul: Yeah.

Kristen: But there are ways to give those kids opportunities if you really want to have them. You just want to take all those things into consideration.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. If you want to have kids working, make sure you understand the rules.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: And don’t get outside of them. I, gosh. I love cookies.

[laughing]

Amanda: Do we need to order some Crumbl for delivery? I’ll see if they’re on the delivery app.

Paul: I don’t know?

Amanda: They’re like 800 calories a cookie. It’s horrible.

[laughing]

Paul: They’re very expensive?

Amanda: Yeah.

Kristen: We get them and cut them up like a pie.

Amanda: Expensive caloric wise.

Paul: Uh huh?

Amanda: Yeah. Like all your day’s calories in one bite. [laughing]

Paul: Well, yeah. Okay. Very interesting topic as we go into the summer as we release this, if you’re out there and you’re listening, whether or not you’re in one of the practices or something, you know, we work in mostly medical regardless of where you are, if you’re listening, just know the rules, you know, and follow them and just be be, you know, fully aware of them. If you have to put posters up, have them up, if you have to have a parent sign, make sure the parent signs.

Kristen: Yeah.

Paul: And then understand what your obligations are as an employer to those kids and take care of them. And for those of you who can find a way to give kids work and give them experience, I’m like, I totally –

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: I think it’s fantastic.

Kristen: Very valuable experience.

Paul: I think it’s very valuable experience.

Amanda: Yeah, I agree.

Paul: Okay, well thanks for running how the cookie crumbles.

[laughing]

Amanda: I was just going to say that!

Paul: This is how the cookie crumbles.

Amanda: From Bruce Almighty!

Paul: Nice. All right.

Amanda: That’s great.

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