Episode 109: You Can’t Pay People in Chicken

Voiceover: 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!

Ally: Hey, Paul.

Paul: Hey, Ally. So, normally I say, “Hey, Ally, what’s up? And what’s…what’s…what the hell just happened in HR?” And then, you know, we take off and we start talking about something. But, this time, I already know what the hell happened in HR because it was all over the news, and it is in my home. It happened in my home state of North Carolina. So it caught my attention when it came across the news feed.

Ally: Yeah, I think this was a really popular one.

Paul: It kind of was everywhere, right?

Ally: It was everywhere. Yeah. So today we’re going to talk about the Chick-Fil-A in North Carolina offering up a handful of entrees per shift for volunteers to come in and work at the… at the Drive-Thru.

Paul: I love this story. I think it has intrigue and like, it’s… it’s just… it’s pretty cool. There’s a lot of different angles to this. And I, I just want to say that I think it was the guy was, or I don’t know if it was a male or female manager, but I think the manager was somehow well-intentioned on some… on some level.

I found the article, so I just want to read what they posted… “We are looking for volunteers for our new drive thru express.” The store in Hendersonville wrote this on a Facebook post and their offer to everybody was in quotations, “earn five free entrees per shift and that’s one hour… per one hour worked. Message us four for details”. And then, I’m just going to go ahead and read the second thing that they posted. You called it doubling down. [Laughs]

[Ally laughs]

Paul: “We’ve had multiple people sign up and enjoy doing and have done it multiple times”. The store wrote in a separate post. “People who sign up for this choose it voluntarily”. And I want to focus on that for a minute, okay?

It seems to imply that, if you choose something as an employee voluntarily, if you agree to that, then it’s okay. Because we’ve all seen on television what contracts mean. And, I mean, I was forced to watch soap operas when I was a child and we all know how the law works from that.

[Ally laughs]

Paul: And if you can get someone [laughs] to agree to it, then, you know, that’s what you need.

And I just want to say to anybody who’s listening right out of the gate, employees cannot give up their rights that are given to them by public policy, by regulation, or any… or any… in any other manner. So an employee can’t agree to a lower minimum wage. An employee cannot agree to work more than 40 hours and not get paid for overtime. An employee can’t agree to work under unsafe working conditions that, you know, underneath the OSHA rules. An employee cannot agree, an employee cannot agree, they cannot agree away their rights.

Ally: So, I just want to add something there because this is something we see all the time. And I think that sometimes people don’t realize that, as you mentioned, with the contracts: by “They can’t agree,” you don’t mean like, “Oh,” you know, “they can’t verbally agree and that doesn’t count.” Like, it does not matter if you have a contract drafted by a lawyer that says that this employee is waiving those rights. All that means is that you’ve got a bad lawyer. [Laughs]

Paul: Yeah. No lawyer would, no lawyer who knew anything about anything would draft this kind of thing. And, unfortunately, when you do draft something like that – and it’s usually someone, again, doing it themselves as a manager or an owner – if they do that, they are actually creating evidence and they’ve signed it. And now it’s in the record to show whatever governing body there is that would come in and investigate this or in a lawsuit. It’s just, it’s a gift. It’s a gift to the other side.

Let’s get back to this thing. Okay. So, look, people can’t be paid in chicken. How about that? You can’t pay people in chicken no matter how delicious those chickens may be. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. Although I do want to say that Bojangles spicy chicken biscuit is way, way better. I mean, I’m from the South, and we’re talking about North Carolina, and there’s a place they’re called Bojangles. Okay.

Ally: You heard it here first. [laughs].

Paul: Yeah. I wish they would come here, but they probably won’t.

[Ally laughs]

Paul: But Bojangles, if you’re listening…[laughs]. Okay, the thing that governs this is the Federal Labor Standards Act and it says right in Section One that you can’t pay people in chicken.

Ally: Verbatim. [Laughs]

Paul: Verbatim. It says right there.

So, I’m hungry.

Ally: Yeah, that was a lot of chicken talk.

Paul: A lot of chicken talk.

Ally: I’m vegetarian so I won’t be eating chicken, but I am definitely hungry. [Laughs]

Paul: Oh no!

[Ally laughs]

Ally: Thanks, Paul. That was a lot of really good information about a very interesting article. I think this one got a lot of traction, so it’s cool to hear some feedback from an HR perspective.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. I’m headed to the drive thru.

Ally: See you there.

Paul: Bye!

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