We've all done it.. or at least Alexa has! This week we explore the juicy and taboo topic of office romances. The duo is joined by Jon Hyman – their favorite employment lawyer – for extra laughs and his solid legal POV to review the details of HR's stickier situations. Whether the romance leads to marriage or becomes hot gos, navigating the office dating pool has its own set of rules. Get some 'based on real-life' advice on sh*tting where you eat, how to handle a colleague's advances, and some things to be careful of when you're bumping uglies with a coworker. This is real life. Don't miss out!
Trigger Warning: adult content, violence
Check out Showcase: perksshowcase.com
John Hyman on Instagram @jonhyman and LinkedIn at Jonathan Hyman
FOLLOW US!
Follow the podcast on Linkedin, Instagram, and TikTok at @peopleproblemspod
Follow the hosts:
Alexa Baggio on Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn
Tyson Mackenzie on Instagram at @hr.shook
Tyson/Alexa
Tyson takes up. What's the craziest shit that's happened to you recently? What's going down? It's going down in Canada. Other than the fact that I literally am Snowden's my house right now. Like there's at least three feet of snow outside my front door and it's like, nice. At this point, I'm just going to wait till things defrost until I leave.
Tyson/Alexa
Isn't that why you live in Canada, though? Like, I feel like you have to live there knowing like four months of the year, you're just probably not going to have to leave your house. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I've got some of the chance, some like winter activities to really enjoy Canada, You've got to be into the winter activities.
Tyson/Alexa
So, like, I've been a skier, but. Yeah. Skiing's yours? Yeah. It's like riding a bike. Loves you. Yeah. Yeah, I snowboard, but I keep telling myself I got to go back into skiing because when you get older, snowboarding is not actually that fun because everyone else skis. So it's like, Yeah, I never did this snowboarding thing. I've always been like a very, like, committed skier and I just, you know, as you get older, things like I've grown out of all my equipment, so it's just like the having to like, get all of the fucking investment.
Tyson/Alexa
It was not cheap, but just remember, like you're going to have that shit for like a decade at least, like 100%. It's just, it's just wild. Because when I had all my gear, it was like super cool and like, yeah, advanced. But now, like, I've seen the skis and I'm like, Shit, those are like you. I would be the technology super fucking different.
Tyson/Alexa
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. My first snowboard, which I just replaced a few years ago, was like a wood core 5150 board. Like they haven't made that that brand in, like, I've had it since I was 14, but I love that thing. I refused to throw it out because I'm like, this thing still shreds. I love this. Yeah, you got to, you got to replace the gear every once in a while.
Tyson/Alexa
But you could get into snowshoeing, you could get into cross-country skiing, which sounds really boring, but I actually kind of enjoy. Yeah, I have trails in my, like, literally my best friend's cross-country skiing trail. And the best part about cross-country skiing is like you. I'm sure they have it there. They have trails is you can go to like find the trails where they have like little huts and they have like mulled wine and like a little fireplace and like a little you're like, we don't have any of that.
Tyson/Alexa
We don't have any of that. It's pretty. Make one. Make yourself a little winter tree house. And I used to go drink mulled wine with your husband, you know? Yeah. You know what? They they might have that on the ice. Like, we also have like, avid ice fishing. So yeah, I live on. So like, all the, all the people, that's what I think of what I think of Canada's hockey and ice fishing.
Tyson/Alexa
If you saw like you've never actually seen where I live, like I live in that quintessential Canadian like landscape. It's, it's hilarious. Yeah, it's really quite funny. I love that you're a caricature of a Canadian. I truly am. That's amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. All right. Anything else? What else is? All right, You got to get into the winter sports.
Tyson/Alexa
I encourage you and challenge you by the next time we record in a few days to attempt a winter sport out of your home away and leave the house and leave your house. I went and got the mail. Okay, here's another funny thing. My mail comes to me at the end of my my driveway. Like it's like in a mailbox where they, like, put up the flags, how normal people get their mail.
Tyson/Alexa
Yes. Really? You know, your mail works. We don't do that. So in Canada, usually you have big mail boxes and everybody goes to like the mailbox and you have like a little cubby with a key. So I think that just depends on like big development. No. Yeah. I grew up in a house with like a mailbox there. The mailbox they Pitsligo Exactly.
Tyson/Alexa
So anyways, I went out and I got the mail. That was my winter activity for this week and I was like, Oh shit, it's cold. And I just ran back inside. So that's about it. Do you do exercise indoors? Like, do you do, do you like if you literally don't leave the house, what do you do? Are you like a Peloton girl or something?
Tyson/Alexa
Absolutely not. But I am a major cult follower of the class right here. And to me, so by one that should educate me. What the fuck is that? Okay, if you haven't done it, you need to do it Every class. By what? The class by turn to me. It's like the name of the creator and it's. It's a little woo woo.
Tyson/Alexa
You know me. I love Krystal. Oh, you love the woo you are time I Well, I'm team woo woo woo. But I swear to God it keeps you completely sane. Like, basically the idea behind it is that you do a lot of repetitive movement and you get your body uncomfortable to the point where your mind becomes uncomfortable and you have to just like work through that.
Tyson/Alexa
So it's like really emotional and it sounds like how I feel about hot yoga. A lot of shit comes up, but it's it's really good and there's a lot of like jumping around and just like, shaking and just like getting all of the wiggles out for you and your mind, which I need because I got a lot of wiggles up in my mouth.
Tyson/Alexa
All right, You'll have to send me the shit. I'll have to. I'll have to. I have to try it. Report back 100%. And so and I don't leave my house, so I'm winning all around. All right? I like it. All right, So we got to get moving. We got to get you moving in Canada. I'm still down here in Mexico writing.
Tyson/Alexa
What is that that you're writing? I see. I opened LinkedIn this morning and I see you on some sort of what is this? ATV? Is ATV, which is or it Mexico. It's got a Quatro motor, which is basically a motorcycle that's easier to ride with four wheels. They're so fucking fun and I want one so badly. But I also want a motorcycle and I want lots of things that don't make any sense for my lifestyle right now.
Tyson/Alexa
Yeah, that was super fun. It's just, you know, it's easy when you're, like, alone to just. Well. Well, I should. Shouldn't. That's easy, cause it's not easy. It's actually hard to book tours and do some of that shit when you're solo, because all of that stuff is built for groups. And I'm, you know, I'm in Puerto Vallarta, which is like a big tourist trap here in Mexico.
Tyson/Alexa
And actually the coolest parts of this city are out of the city center, like the tourist zone. If you're not a tourist person, which I'm not really, I kind of scoff at a lot of that stuff because you have to get out of the city. Yeah, well, it's just like, I'm not going to get off a cruise ship and go to, like, the restaurant that the tour guide at the pier, like, recommended.
Tyson/Alexa
To me, that's like overpriced for fat Americans, which is 80% of the tourist here to be. Exactly. So you got to get out of the city a bit. And so the easiest way to do that is to like either do runs or book tours, basically just because it's a way for like a local tour guide to show you shit you wouldn't see on your own or couldn't find on your own.
Tyson/Alexa
And sometimes it's hard to do when you're solo. But yeah, I took a ATV tour up the mountains. Puerto Vallarta sits on the San Andreas Fault, which is really cool. So if you get out of the little tour zone, it's actually kind of cool and fun. And, you know, they give you you can eat tequila, eat tequila, drink tequila and do all that stuff if you want to.
Tyson/Alexa
So that's fun. I'm always doing random shit like that. Just try to explore new things, get out of my comfort zone. But I got mostly out of my comfort zone recently because I got violently ill earlier this week, which never happens to me. Like I don't get sick, knock on wood, but like I just am one of those people, like maybe once every seven years.
Tyson/Alexa
But my body did a control all delete on me this week. Chills, fever, like. And the funniest thing is so I I'll tell this story only because it's a lead into our conversation for the episode which is that, you know, I'm single and I'm traveling solo. So the good news about that is it opens you up for all kinds of like, let's see where this goes.
Tyson/Alexa
The bad news about that is that sometimes it can be wildly uncomfortable if you don't manage the situation correctly. But so I had gone for a run one evening after work. I try to my friends, everyone knows I'm in a windowless apartment here because I fucked up and didn't do my Airbnb research very well for this particular apartment.
Tyson/Alexa
And I, you know, so each night I try to get out to at least see the sunset because I can't see the fucking sunrise and there's no windows in my apartment, which is great for working, terrible for general mental health. So I try to get out and see a sunset. This particular day I needed to work out, so I went for a run and my eyes kind of suck at night.
Tyson/Alexa
So I saw this gentleman sitting on the beach and I will be very obvious, like my my girlfriends always joke. They're like, I meet real dudes IRL than most people they know. But it's because, like, I'll be very obvious if I'm interested what you have to do. So anyway, I'm like trying to figure out if this guy's cute, but I can't see him very well.
Tyson/Alexa
So I'm like googling this guy, blah, blah, blah. And I'm, you know, I'm on a run and I'm British and I'm like, all right, You know, he's he's reading a book at sunset on the beach. Like, these are all positive things as a prospect. You know, you read your ad, you're out on the beach at sunset, you're alone.
Tyson/Alexa
There's no one with you at the sunset. That usually means you're single. So I'm, you know, I'm scoping it out and nothing happens. Like, I go, I got to go back to work, whatever. And it's dark and I can't see shit. And I'm like, I can't tell you, but whatever. I'll come investigate tomorrow. I'm going to go lay on the beach on the weekend.
Tyson/Alexa
So I go investigate. I go back. He happens to come back the next day. I still can't see if he's very cute from far away because my sunglasses aren't very well polarized. Whatever. Long story short, he makes his way. You gets displaced by a volleyball game and he winds up next to me. Sadly, he's not. He's not as cute as I had hoped, but he's a very nice guy.
Tyson/Alexa
And we go get food. So we decided, okay, let's go. You know, I've been intermittent fasting for 24 hours. I'm starving. So I'm like, Let's go get some food. So we go to a seafood place and not thinking anything of the place was really good. It was delicious. But one of the things that we had is a raw shrimp tostada.
Tyson/Alexa
No. So I didn't think anything of it. I felt fine. The meal was delicious, you know, we parted our ways. I was like, really nice to meet you. Not romantically interested, but always nice to make a friend who's an interesting dude actually works in IO, which is fucking weird. And so then 36, literally exactly like 30 hours from that encounter with the raw shrimp, I was like, Oh, my fucking deathbed, like, raw shrimp chill.
Tyson/Alexa
Yeah, I didn't even think because, like, we don't eat raw shrimp in the U.S. and I didn't think anything of it. I was like, Oh, this is like, it was like, too far removed in my brain to have been from that meal, like food poisoning. I feel like you just get the next day. Do not eat raw shrimp, slow release poison.
Tyson/Alexa
It was it was fucking brutal, but. Oh, God. Yeah, well, you seem to be better now, so my immune system needed like a control all delete and it fucking got one. Yeah. So sometimes your body will really tell you when it's time to like you're not in the driver's seat right now, champ. I got this one. So. Yeah.
Tyson/Alexa
So in my romantic pursuits, I got violently ill. And now we're going to talk about sleeping with coworkers. What a good transition. Really quickly. Before that, though, I do want to make sure that we mention if people haven't noticed. But how could you not notice like our dope glow up? I'm very proud of our of our new branding, our new look.
Tyson/Alexa
Our team did a great job For those of you who follow us on socials or receive our weekly newsletter, thank you. First and foremost, been awesome to watch that grow. And we did get a little facelift around here, so if you haven't seen it, check it out at people problems Today.com we very proud of our new look and we're also launch it launching excuse me something for our listeners and our peeps as we call you guys these days because you call yourselves that is that now are a lot of the resources that were available only to our private Pops community, which you can still join that's not going anywhere, are available on said website for
Tyson/Alexa
you to purchase or download. So all kinds of cool resources that other people up some h.r professionals have made or contributed to or shared with us all kinds of like fun and cool resources like employee handbooks and welcome guides and stuff. That's really helpful. So, yeah, i'm proud of our new look. Tysons. We look, we look sexy. We look what?
Tyson/Alexa
Nice of it. We've got a glow up so people can use the code people problems for 20%, 20% off their first purchase. And we want to hear what you think. So let us know if you like our glow up and then yeah, that's it. Anything else, Tyson, before I. Before we get John in here. Yeah, you know what?
Tyson/Alexa
I'm just so excited to get John in here, so let's look for it. All right, great. John in here. John is as people now back at one of our favorite, you're basically just like our lawyer. You're just Yeah, you're just part of the family at this point, John. But John Heiman is a partner at Wickens Hauser Panza. He is a lawyer for employers and Craft breweries, which is my favorite odd professional combination master of workplace schadenfreude at Blogger Dead Husband, Failed game show contestant and our favorite LinkedIn lawyer.
Tyson/Alexa
Welcome back. Nice to have you here. Very excited to talk about some taboo topics.
Jon
I'm so excited to be back. I can I tell you how excited I was when I listened to your year end wrap up and heard that I made the cut that like total, that made my week. It made my month. I was like, Yes, So.
Tyson/Alexa
I love.
Jon
That. So it's like to be back.
Tyson/Alexa
Yeah, well, we're happy to have you back. It's nice to have you as a staple. And you know, we know you can't talk about sex without a lawyer around. So.
Jon
Yeah, we got to see, you know, we need some NDAs, we got to sign some staff. Oh, yeah.
Tyson/Alexa
So I can't wait. I can't wait. Before we jump into the. How are you, John? Is everything good on everything good on your end?
Jon
Everything is going good. Everything's going well.
Tyson/Alexa
Anything new or exciting? Very nervous.
Jon
I'm coaching my daughter's high school mock trial team and who? Nice. And they compete tomorrow, so I'm nervous. I'm nervous for them.
Tyson/Alexa
Because what do they. What do they win?
Jon
Well, they win the right to move on to the next round of the competition is what they win. So they're minus the trials. It's it's it is it involves exploding pop rocks, candy, that someone put in eggs at a high school fundraising breakfast. And whether the prime suspect should have been read her Miranda rights when she's being questioned by the school resource officer about whether she was the one where he was the one who put said Pop Rocks in the eggs.
Tyson/Alexa
Is this a real scenario?
Jon
I'm not sure. I'm I'm not I'm not sure. Yeah. That they it's yeah.
Tyson/Alexa
In eggs. Yeah. It's disgusting.
Jon
Yeah. So yeah so.
Tyson/Alexa
What's the crime. What's what's the crime to tainting the like I.
Jon
Guess like, like in a like an assault. Right. Like you put the.
Tyson/Alexa
Assault on my taste buds.
Jon
All sorts are one, one of the key witnesses is and actually the witness that my daughter is playing is the suspect's prime academic rival. And her grandmother actually had her dentures shattered by the pop rocks when she was actually bit into the eggs at the breakfast.
Tyson/Alexa
Is very player. I don't I don't I was I did speech and debate in high school. Not very not very well and not for very long because I was like, oh, man, I'm already insecure about not being popular. This is not helping me. And I just have to read sports to play. But I don't remember. I mean, the speech debate, you just like I remember you recite things, there's a little bit of debate depending on if you got into that side of things.
Tyson/Alexa
But I don't remember things being like this involved no story.
Jon
It's a lot like there is. I mean, they call witnesses and they make objections and it's like a whole real trial is this is extracurricular? Yeah, it's extra curricular. But my kids my kids go to a like a small, independent private school that does not have a football team because they're too small. And mock trial is like the football the football team.
Jon
It's like the football team at the school. The school takes it super seriously. So.
Tyson/Alexa
Wow.
Jon