White collar work is also more likely to lead to burn-out and mental health disability, which leads to longer and more expensive claims than many physical injuries. 

I’m launching a Substack where I’ll anthologize my more informational content into practical, educational posts that tell you how I actually GSD.  You can expect thrilling topics like state labor regulations, insurance regulations, payroll tax insights, deep dives into obscure payroll settings, workflow design, free practical resources, calls to action, and buttons to click.

One does not simply fire someone in a position of leadership. Loose lips sink ships.

Managing all of this takes time and brain power. You’re contacting the employee, looking up policy details, doing unconfident math, and trying to figure out payroll work-arounds. The lost productivity cancels out the amount you’re saving by relying on these outside subsidies. Meanwhile, the new parent thinks it’s all your fault and blames you for the terrible experience you’re putting them through.

If you’ve been trapped in your workplace unable to leave, eating Doritos from the vending machine for dinner and sleeping under your desk, should you be paid for that time?

And speaking of equal opportunity, pirates welcomed escaped sailors from marginalized identities, giving them opportunities for advancement that they never would have had in the navy or merchant marines. Lady-pirates could even become captains, like Ching Shih, who led a fleet of 1,200 ships and a workforce the size of Morgan Stanley. You could call it D-E-Aye-aye-matey.

If you build a workflow that requires more than half of their brain, they’re going to mess up. The best workflows can be done while driving in the 2-minute gaps between chat support responses from the corner of the couch with Dora the Explorer playing at top volume in the background.

Spybots... I mean, 'AI notetakers' freak me out. Not because I’m paranoid. Because I sit in on a lot of meetings that people wouldn’t want recorded. Luckily, I live in California, which is a two-party consent state.  Meaning those nosey little spybots need to announce themselves. 

But hang on, what’s the point of making someone find a printer, and a scanner, and a pen, and those little “sign here” stickies anyway? Why, crime, of course!

The most common reason to hold on to employment records is because at some point, someone is going to need them. You may get a zombie tax letter with a five-figure fine from a state where no one’s worked for years. An employee may go through a nasty divorce and need payroll records from several years ago. Someone could file a complaint of systemic bias, and you’ll need complete records going back years to defend yourself. You may want to run a report on long-term trends and n

When someone is paid for a day they didn't work, it MUST be entered into payroll as some kind of Paid Time Off type. Otherwise, there's no way to pay it. Most of the uncommon leave types don't allow negative balances in payroll systems. So if your time off isn't allocated to another bucket, it can't get paid. The discrepancy could even block payroll and prevent everyone from getting paid.

Your handbook should help people make decisions. Not just disciplinary decisions. The handbook should draw bright lines where possible, and give guidance for situations that are unclear. Your handbook should give guidance on the unspoken habits your organization runs on.

Hiring the right people is only one ingredient to elite operations. Excellence is also about preventing the circumstances that leave room for mistakes. The procedures for putting down the CAUTION WET FLOOR signs that prevent the slip-and-falls of history. 

Most of the Louvre’s collection is literally priceless. Meaning that their value as historical artifacts is unquantifiable. You can’t take out an insurance policy on something that’s invaluable. The cost would be prohibitive.

Going into your DMs with someone who’s left the company feels like walking into the perfectly-preserved bedroom of someone who passed away before their time. Eerie, reverent, forbidden.

You’re sending the recipient to purgatory. They'll spend the whole weekend in an avoidance loop, thinking about your email and dreading the mental calories it will take to reply. They’ll be headed out on a date with their spouse, turn on their phone to call an Uber, and there will be the notification for YOUR EMAIL, just waiting. Watching.

When you’re the one who makes sure that everything is done by the book, there’s no one left to manage your exit correctly. That often means that you’re more likely than anyone to be underpaid or have your exit mishandled. 

When it comes to hiring and promotion, we tend to think admin skills are intuitive. So we devalue them. But admin skills are not universal.

If more people could see the data, maybe they’d want to renegotiate. But they might also have a better understanding of how their value is measured, and therefore find ways to bring more value to the company.

Nearly everything that happens in the company goes through payroll. And the person managing it needs to have the skills of an accountant, IT, lawyer, insurance agent, and operations manager, all rolled into one.