Nasir and Matt discuss the recent incidentat a Victoria's Secret store where the store manager kicked out all black women after one black woman was caught shoplifting. They then each present dueling steps businesses should take when employees are accused of harassment.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and we’re two attorneys with Pasha Law, with offices in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.

NASIR: Welcome to the podcast. This is where we cover business in the news with a legal twist.

Today, we’re trying to answer the question, “Who calls whom when you get disconnected on the line?”

You always get in that awkward situation. No, we’re not talking about that.

MATT: We’ll have our opinion of that at the end. I have a couple of thoughts.

NASIR: You have a couple of thoughts?

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: Okay. Because, yeah, you’re driving along and, all of a sudden, you get disconnected and then you call each other and then they both go to voicemail. It drives you crazy.

Anyway, today, we’re actually discussing what to do when a customer or client accuses your employees – or worst, you, your business – for being racist.

MATT: Right. this all kind of stemmed about from an incident – by the time people listen to this – last week.

Last week, in Alabama, a woman was caught shoplifting at a Victoria’s Secret which, in a vacuum, wouldn’t really be a story we’d cover on this show. But, in this case, the situation was escalated because what we had was a black woman who was caught stealing and the response by the store’s manager was to kick out every other black female in the store.

NASIR: Whoops.

MATT: This is where we meet the individual named Kimberly Houzah. The reason we found out about this was she went on Facebook Live and did an 11-minute thing about her experience. She got even emotional. I think she ran the full gamut of emotions from kind of laughing almost to disbelief to angry to upset and why she was forced out of the store eventually and that video or that Facebook Live went viral. You kind of alluded to the “oops!” Big mistake on this store manager’s part.

NASIR: Yeah, I mean, her reaction is probably very similar to how anyone else would react but, at the same time, it’s like, what do you do in that situation? I mean, it’s very awkward. At the same time, you want to stand up for your rights and file a complaint but, at the same time, you also don’t want to be, all of a sudden, the center of a story on a podcast.

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: I always find it strange, whenever these people that go through these situations, I’m sure this always goes through their mind, right? On one hand, I was just thinking about, remember that one coffee at McDonald’s? Everyone knows this story. Coffee gets spilled on a woman and she sues McDonald’s and she actually won a judgment and ended up settling later. Of course, the narrative is that she sued McDonald’s for millions of dollars and she knew the coffee was hot and so forth. But the reality is there’s a lot more to that story and I’m not going to talk about that but the bottom line is that that woman – who ended up being a kind of an elderly woman – was in the passenger’s seat and she gets pretty severe burns on here. What do you do? She had to go through months without medical bills being paid about tens of thousands of dollars. McDonald’s was offering her some kind of nominal amount and it’s not like she wanted to sue but you get to a point where it’s like, “Okay, I have to raise this issue.”

MATT: Were you the one that turned me on to that documentary? You probably were.

NASIR: I don’t know. I don’t even know what documentary. This is the second time I talked about this today. Logan was saying something about some documentary. I didn’t even know there was one.

MATT: The other one was to a cashier at McDonald’s as you were talking to her.

NASIR: Yeah, exactly.

Nasir and Matt return to talk about the different types of clients that may have outstanding invoices and how businesses can convert unpaid bills to getting paid.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

We’re both attorneys here with Pasha Law PC, currently practicing with offices in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.

NASIR: Welcome to the podcast where we discuss current business news with our legal twist.

Today, we are discussing what to do when your client refuses to pay.

MATT: Correct.

You know, we decided to change things up a little bit. I don’t think this is necessary for any one particular current event that’s going on but it’s an ongoing issue. Maybe in the news people have seen some real estate tycoons who have, over the past few decades, hired contractors and small business owners for jobs, let them perform the service, perform the work. When they’ve completed them, companies haven’t held up their end of the deal. So, what we’re going to discuss today is, as a business owner, what can you do to protect yourself from being blindsided as well as what you can do once it’s happened.

NASIR: And this is a problem that pretty much every business has. I mean, it’s hard to think of any business that really doesn’t have some consideration of how to collect money from your customers or clients, right?

For other businesses, there’s less risk. For others, there’s more. It’s just kind of depending upon what industry you’re in. Obviously, we represent a lot of small and medium-sized businesses across the country. But this could be very frustrating and sometimes crippling challenge to some business owners, especially in high-risk industries. We’re talking about everything from a lot of service-based industries – construction is one of those things where, a lot of times, there’s non-payment – and then, also, if you’re working with the type of clientele that tends to, you know, you have certain fees that maybe they can’t afford and they’re already in a position where they’re disadvantaged in relationship to what they’re being provided. I’m starting to think about, like, credit repair services. I know a lot of bankruptcy attorneys, for example, they have to make sure that they get paid their money because their clients are filing for bankruptcy.

There’s a very wide range of types of businesses but pretty much every business has to deal with this issue on some level.

MATT: Yeah. Like you said, it’s going to vary greatly, depending on the nature of the work and the industry. If it’s a business where you’re going to require 100 percent payment upfront, obviously, you’re going to have less issues. I mean, you could still have chargebacks, things like that, or bounced checks. I think your bankruptcy example is a really good one. If you’re going to get paid at the end, especially with a client who’s having presumably some sort of money issues, it’s going to be a lot harder to collect. Really, to me, it’s a two-part analysis. It’s the front-end and the back-end. You can be proactive about it and that’s, of course, making sure you have all the safety precautions in place – obviously, we’re two lawyers here, we’re going to talk about what agreement and the terms you would have in that. On the flip side is the reactionary aspect of it and what you do after this happens. That can even be in situations – and many times it is – where you have a contract and the client just has refused to pay or can’t pay or whatever reason they might give.

NASIR: Yeah. In fact, whenever we come across a client, they want to go after a customer or a client that hasn’t paid and so forth, I mean, our first thought is, “Yeah, we need to address the apparent issue that the client is bringing to us.” But, in the back of our minds, “Okay, what can we do to assess to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future?” Because most businesses can’t survive having to hire an a...

After a long break, Nasir and Matt are back to discuss a Milwaukee frozen custard stand that is now revising it's English only policy for employees. The guys also discuss how similar policies could be grounds for discrimination and what employers can do to revise their policies.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Hello and welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And…

MATT: And we’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law. You know, it’s been a little bit. I guess it’s been probably a full month since the last time this came out.

NASIR: I think we’re both a little older, a little wiser.

MATT: Definitely older. I think that’s how time works.

So, yeah, welcome to the podcast where we discuss current business news with a legal twist.

Today, we’re going to discuss whether or not businesses can require employees to speak only English while at work which is something I’ve actually thought about before. You and I are both in I guess locations where it might be more applicable than others.

NASIR: Yeah. I mean, Houston is like a metropolitan when it comes to languages and cultures. I mean, it’s not a New York but it’s pretty close. Of course, San Diego, the Latin community there is absolutely huge. In fact, not knowing Spanish is quite a detriment which is why I moved out right away.

MATT: Right away?

NASIR: After a long number of years.

MATT: Yeah, location is not everything because what we’re sort of going to touch on here deals with a situation in Milwaukee.

NASIR: That’s true.

MATT: This is pretty expansive but let’s dive into this.

A small mom-and-pop store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Leon’s Frozen Custard – is having some issues. I guess a customer named Joey Sanchez said he was behind a Spanish-speaking woman while he was in line at the frozen custard store who was told by an employee that she had to place her order in English. I guess Mr. Sanchez thought that was a little bit weird. When he got up in line, he too was told he had to order in English. At that point, the employee who speaks both Spanish and English told him that she was not allowed to speak Spanish to the customer even though they could have a perfectly fine and understandable conversation speaking in Spanish.

NASIR: I just got a note. This Leon’s Frozen Custard is apparently kind of a staple in the area. It’s this kind of cool, it almost looks like an old studio diner kind of deal. If you look at it, it reminds me, have you ever been to that frozen yogurt place in El Cajon? It’s called The Mill.

MATT: I don’t think so, no.

NASIR: Obviously, I can’t now, but you’ve got to check it out. It’s a good summer place to go to get some frozen yogurt. I’m looking it up. I think it’s called The Mill.

MATT: Perfect timing in November. I guess it’s been pretty hot here.

NASIR: Perfect time. Yeah, the Yogurt Mill. This was before yogurt places were popular, where you’d pay per ounce. This is like you pay a few bucks and get a whole large cup of yogurt, whatever flavors you want. Usually, in the summers, there’s lines out the door every single day. Check it out.

Anyway, quick plug and they definitely did not sponsor this program but we definitely will be asking for some money after this. But, go ahead, sorry to interrupt.

MATT: The podcast where we do the sponsor randomly in the middle which does exist for a lot of them.

So, we have this situation here and the owner of this Leon’s Frozen Custard, Ron Schneider, not to confused with Rob Schneider.

NASIR: I was confused.

MATT: He’s claiming that he’s following the law. This was before this fall happened. He’s following the law and his policy is a matter of business and speeding up sales and not one of discrimination. He said he’s had this policy in place for more than a decade, when an increasing number of Spanish speakers moved into the area in Milwaukee. This policy, what it was is that employees are required to speak only English – not only to each other and ...

The guys discuss the new California law that allows actors to request the removal of their date of birth and birthdays on their IMDB page and why they think the law won't last. They also discuss how age discrimination claims arise for business owner.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business!

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

Both attorneys here with Pasha Law.

NASIR: Yeah, practicing in the states of California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.

I’m going to try to do different, you know how we have an intro that we try to stick with but we try to change it up so what I’m going to do is I’m going to change the order of the states.

MATT: Yeah. So, you have 12, 26 different, you can do that 26 times.

NASIR: Is that right?

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: Can someone check that? I don’t believe Matt.

MATT: Sorry, no, 24 times. I don’t know.

NASIR: I’ll confirm that by the end of the show.

MATT: Ah, man, bad math on this Thursday. It must be the heat.

I’ll introduce the podcast. Like I said, this is Legally Sound Smart Business. We discuss current businesses with a legal twist. Last week, I actually was joking about talking about Brad Pitt. Today, it’s actually applicable to what we’re talking about because there’s a new law or a new legislation that’s been passed in California to go into effect January 1st 2017 that deals with actors such as Brad Pitt.

Now, let me see. You know how I like to read pieces of statutes because I think it’s very uneventful for the listener but to get this point across.

NASIR: I hope you don’t read the whole thing.

MATT: No, I’m just going to read this piece here.

The premise – from a layman’s perspective – is allowing actors to not have their age or birthday listed on their IMDB page if they don’t want to, generally speaking.

NASIR: Keep in mind – and Matt is going to read it – the statute doesn’t say IMDB, of course. Go ahead.

MATT: Yeah, but it’s pretty obvious.

So, a commercial online entertainment employment service provider that enters into a contractual agreement to provide employment services to an individual or a subscription payment shall not, upon request of the subscriber, do either of the following… and then we get to publish their subscriber’s date of birth or age or share the subscriber’s date of birth or age information in any internet website for the purpose of publication.

That’s what people want to read because there’s so many words in there. That’s more combinations and permutations in our four states in different order.

NASIR: I feel like that’s why I’m not getting hired for any big acting jobs.

MATT: Yeah.

So, this is one of my issues with this right off the bat is one of the main arguments for this law is that it essentially allows age discrimination because, supposedly, people that are staffing for a movie or TV show can go to this person’s IMDB page, see their age, and say, “Oh, they’re too old.” But, to me, I don’t think that’s how it works. We’ve all seen plenty of shows. It’s all about how old or young you look, not how old or young you actually are, in my opinion.

NASIR: That’s probably true for certain actors but I think, if you’re starting out or still in a class C or D or E or lower letter than that of a celebrity or an actor, then I think age probably does matter because they’re probably like, “Okay, I want a 25-year-old that has this certain look.” Casting directors may have that criteria so I understand it from that perspective. But, yeah, if you’re an actor like me, you don’t really care about my age so long as you have my pretty face on the screen.

MATT: Yeah, I guess that’s one thing I didn’t know of how the process worked.

In your example, let’s say they want a 25-year-old whatever – 23 to 27-year-old – do they go to the talent agent and give them those numbers? Is there a hard search of those numbers that fits in or is it someone who looks that way?

I actually have some friends who are in the industry.

Nasir and Matt discuss the racial discrimination claims surroundingAirbnb and how it's handled the situation. They also discuss some practical tips for businesses experiencing similar issues.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub and we’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law.

NASIR: That’s right.

We practice business law throughout the United States. Actually, no, only four states, right? California, Illinois, Texas, and New York. I have them memorized.

MATT: Depends how you look at it. I mean, it’s really technically coast to coast.

NASIR: Oh, absolutely, it’s coast to coast.

Either way, welcome to our show today. We are covering Airbnb and this is where we take that business legal news – or I should say “business news” – and add our legal twist. The legal twist we’re adding today is basically Airbnb and, I should say, more specifically their host, are being accused of racism. What do you think about that?

MATT: I have the wrong notes. I have this is Brad Pitt, Angeline Jolie. Must be my other podcast.

NASIR: Yeah, that’s afterwards, right?

MATT: Okay. All right, very good.

NASIR: Stay tuned for that.

MATT: I found the right one.

NASIR: Okay, good.

MATT: Airbnb, off the top, let me just get through a little bit of what’s going on. You kind of did the nice little lead in here but let’s run through it a little bit here.

Airbnb, for those of you who don’t know, it’s an online way to essentially either find a place to stay from anywhere from one night to more or, if you have your own place, you can do the same thing – you can rent out your place for a night. Have you ever used it before?

NASIR: I’ve used it internationally but, domestically – when I say “domestically” I mean within a mile of my house – I haven’t used it.

MATT: Yeah, same with me. Like I said, it’s a pretty nice service, especially for people if you have a weekend, you’re going for a wedding, something like that. Internationally, it’s very good as well. I think it’s a little bit more… I should say more accepted but it seems like it’s more prevalent there.

NASIR: It seems ideal, especially if you want a house or something, when you’re in a big group, that seems like a good choice.

MATT: Right.

NASIR: Certain locations, the hotel choices aren’t that great or you want a different experience than the rather routine tourist location.

MATT: As our assistant put it, you have a place with a little bit more character. I think that was well-put by him.

They have this setup where it’s essentially a platform for people to rent their spaces out and also rent spaces. Pretty much, I guess since the beginning, there’s been some talks of racism that have occurred. Really, what it is is a situation – I’ll kind of boil it down, how it works.

You do your search, you see this site, and you see what places are available within the area you’ve searched, and then you do a request to rent that space if it’s open for those days. At that point, the owner can either accept that or reject it or do some sort of back and forth what-have-you. I mean, it’s not a negotiation per se but it’s just, “Oh, sorry, this place is actually rented out, I forgot to mark it.” Something to that effect.

What’s been happening is there’s been requests by certain demographics of people that have raised some eyebrows. Let me bring up one example in particular. This is a man, Rohan Gilkes – this is on Medium.com, I actually checked out the little story, it’s pretty funny – well, not the racism part but some of the other stuff, we’ll post it.

What happened with him was he’s a black man, wanted to visit a friend in Idaho. She mentioned there was a great cabin on Airbnb close to her. He thought, “Perfect! I will look at that space.” He found it, requested to stay there for five days. Like I said, when that happens, the owner of the place sees his profile and has his photo on it which, at that point,

Nasir and Matt discuss whyAmazon seller accounts are getting suspended and banned without notice and how business owners can rectify this situation through a Corrective Action Plan.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

We’re attorneys here with Pasha Law PC, practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.

Welcome to the podcast!

NASIR: Yeah, and this is where we discuss business in the news and add our legal twist.

Today, we are talking about Amazon.com.

MATT: Never heard of it.

NASIR: And how they’re… No, no, no, it’s a website that sells stuff.

MATT: Okay, eBay.

NASIR: Apparently, all these guys go on there and they sell stuff but Amazon is apparently terminating or suspending some of those sellers’ accounts somewhat arbitrarily – hundreds by the day, apparently.

MATT: Let me just do a quick rundown here of kind of what’s going on.

NASIR: Please do.

MATT: I was just joking, for people maybe listening for the first time.

NASIR: I think they know that you knew what Amazon was but sorry to interrupt you. Literally, yesterday, I was thinking about it because I knew we were going to cover this today. I think it was around 25 different packages from Amazon – no exaggeration – and the reason is because – I think I’ve talked about this last time – we were expecting so we had a whole list of things that we’re buying and we’ve been waiting for a while just to figure out because we’re also moving and we’re like, “Let’s just go ahead and buy it now,” so they all came within 24 hours so I picked it all yesterday. A couple of packages are arriving today still.

MATT: Was that Amazon Prime?

NASIR: Yeah, it was Amazon Prime, two-day shipping.

MATT: Yeah, contemplating getting that myself. We’ll have to talk after this to see.

NASIR: We’ll discuss it afterwards.

MATT: For those who aren’t as familiar with Amazon…

NASIR: Those of you who don’t live on Planet Earth.

MATT: Amazon has thousands of third-party sellers who utilize their marketplace as a storefront – something which I imagine probably have actual storefronts as well but, for the most part, this is mostly eCommerce. And so, some of these small businesses as you alluded to are saying that their accounts are being suspended with little notice and very few options of recourse and what some are calling arbitrary suspensions.

A recent conference for online entrepreneurs and sellers in Seattle pitted the sellers against Amazon with hundreds of vendors and merchants expressing their concern over these suspensions, nothing that they live in fear of being unable to sell on their site, and we’ll get into why that’s an issue here, because you might think, “Well, it’s just one site, why not sell somewhere else – like their own site, for example?” But Amazon, it’s a very impactful site for these businesses.

A recent Wall Street Journal interview, a vice president of Amazon said, “Sellers reporting an average of 50 percent increase in sales from when they joined Amazon’s marketplace and used its storage and shipping services.” Pretty substantial.

NASIR: Yeah, and they’ve made it so easy for sellers to enter into this because, if you think about it, if you have something to sell, not only will they take care of the merchant processing but also the inventory cracking, the shipping, even the storage. In fact, Amazon prefers you to ship your supplies to their fulfillment center so that, as soon as someone purchases it, they can easily ship it. Not only do they make it easy for you, you also get that marketing available that you wouldn’t get if you just had your own website. So, it makes sense.

MATT: Yeah, I think that’s kind of the default spot – one of the default sites – people go to buy something.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: These business owners that are affected by this are saying they’re losing hundreds of thousands in sales – which could definitely be the case for some of them – due to ...

Nasir and Matt talk about the accusations surroundingfashion giant Zararipping off the designs of independent artists like Tuesday Bassen and howsmaller companies can battle the industry giants.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to our podcast.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, a firm practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.

Welcome to the podcast. I don’t get the opportunity to do the bulk of the intros.

NASIR: We’re splitting it up a little bit this time but welcome, everybody! This is where we take business in the news and add our legal twist to it. I think today we have a nice topic. What do we have?

MATT: We have an interesting topic today. We’re going to be discussing what’s come together as a group of independent artists and designers who have all alleged that their works, intellectual property have been stolen by this huge fashion icon, Zara, which is believe is a Spanish-based company.

One artist in particular – which kind of started this whole dispute that’s been going on – is Tuesday Bassen who first started off by taking action that sent a cease and desist letter to Zara and basically asked them for compensation because she was under the impression that some of her pins and patches… It’s going to be easier for us to kind of show this. We’ll put a link in the notes. People have to see for themselves but basically saying that some of her work had been essentially ripped off by this huge company and, as a result, she lost money.

We know this is something a lot of business owners care about, particularly ones that we work with, I mean, being the smaller companies here. Sometimes, they have to fight these battles against the bigger ones. This is something that comes up all the time with clients or other individuals that we talk to. I think it’s going to be pretty good. We’re going to run through kind of the background here but I think it’s going to be a pretty good takeaway for these smaller companies because those are going to be the ones in this position here.

NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. Thankfully, I am a fashion guru, as you said. I’ve actually shopped at Zara, I think, at least once. I assume you have not?

MATT: No, I didn’t even know they sold men’s clothes until I looked them up.

NASIR: Oh, I didn’t buy men’s clothes there.

MATT: Okay.

NASIR: But, apparently, Zara has a little bit of a reputation apparently of allegedly stealing some of these designs. Tuesday Bassen is not the first person to go after Zara for the same thing but I think her case is a little bit different and she seems to have a social media presence that is behind and I think that’s what really galvanized a response from Zara that has gone public now.

MATT: Exactly. She’s really the one that has kind of kicked things off – or at least the one that gained the PR in order for other people to step up. I know there’s another one, for example, this guy named Adam Kurtz who was verified when I looked him up on Twitter so he must be a pretty big deal in the industry as well. But, yes, Tuesday, she started things off by sending this cease and desist letter to Zara. As far as we know, we don’t know the exact.

NASIR: Yeah, we couldn’t find the exact letter but I think we know how much she paid for it. She paid $2,000 but we don’t know what exactly it said.

MATT: Yeah, the pertinent information is just how much she paid an attorney to write it and not what was actually in there.

NASIR: Not a bad price, by the way.

MATT: I mean, we have a good idea what was in there. Basically, I’m assuming she kind of asserted that she owns these works and Zara is infringing upon them by straight up ripping them off. I assume maybe she had asked for some sort of compensation for them to stop doing it – something to that effect is my guess. She can send me that bill for $2,000 now as well since I just…

NASIR: Anyone could have wrote—no, that’s true.

No, absolutely,

Nasir and Matt discuss Brave Software's ad replacing technology that has caught the eye of almost every national newspaper and has a potential copyright infringement claim looming. They also welcome digital marketing expert Matt Michaelree to speak on the specifics of what Brave is attempting to do and whether it has the answers moving forward.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where cover business in the news and add our legal twist.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And I am a business attorney and so is Matt, and we practice business law throughout the country in Texas, California, New York, and Illinois. Been doing it for a while now, right?

MATT: Speak for yourself. I can’t say. I don’t think I can necessarily put myself in all those states but the firm at least.

NASIR: We provide legal services to small and medium-sized businesses and we’re happy to do it and this is the podcast where we cover what’s relevant to our clients.

MATT: How I look at it, it’s an interesting dynamic because – not to spend too much time on this but – we typically service small to medium-sized businesses. We often talk about big businesses and then relate it back to how it applies to those small and medium-sized businesses. It’s running the full gamut of business size.

NASIR: It’s true because only big business have the money to actually litigate these issues so they’re the ones that control the law and we’ll see that today in our topic today, for sure.

MATT: I guess you can classify this as still, they’ve gotten some money but it’s still relatively small business. I think this would fall under our typical client or a client we would handle necessarily.

So, we’re talking about Brave Software. For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, I think the best way to kind of summarize this – at least from my perspective – is I don’t know if you want to say ad blocker or ad replacer but basically you go to a site – dealing with the media in this case – and essentially an ad that might pop up, I mean, I’m sure everyone that’s listening is familiar with this, you know, you go to the Union Tribune to something in San Diego and you try to click on an article and, instead of getting that, you get some sort of ad or video or something to that effect. I mean, I think we’ve all been there. I’m sure you’ve been there, right?

NASIR: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Of course, with all those ads, it also slows down the website and this Brave Software purports to promise to speed up to 300 percent times faster by removing webpage ads and scripts. But the main issue is that the Newspaper Association of America has thrown a fuss about this and they sent a very scathing letter and published it online to basically protest against this browser.

MATT: Right. If you noticed, I was hesitant to say “ad blocker” at the beginning because I think that’s how they were kind of describing it initially – or at least that’s how it’s being reported. But, really, what it is is an ad replacer and you’ve just touched on it the way they’ve set things up is going to speed things up on the user’s end. It’s possibly going to do some things with tracking of people as well. I mean, less tracking as opposed to going to a site and having those things on your computer. But, also, from a security standpoint.

But the idea in place for Brave is that it’s going to replace the ads that you would typically see and cater it I guess more so towards something that you might be interested in. I think this is actually we can see that out there, too. I don’t know if you’ve ever… this is when I search for things, that’s why I always do it in a private browsing because I don’t want this to track it as something of mine. I’ve been looking up a daybed that my wife had picked out. And so, I’d looked it up. Now, when I go to all these websites, certain sites, I see all these ads for that daybed or I’ll see ads for some of our clients from time to time, too,

Nasir and Matt discuss the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson against Fox CEO Roger Ailes. They also talk aboutthe importance of sexual harassment training and properly handling such allegations in the office.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And, boy, do we have a story today.

MATT: Yeah, I mean, it just keeps evolving. It’s far from final but, I mean, kind of one of the big things that we were waiting to hear on happened.

Let me rewind a little bit and let’s go to the beginning – well, not the very beginning because Roger Ailes has been working with FOX for a really long time so we’re not going to maybe start that far back but I guess we’ll start with the actual complaint that was filed.

NASIR: Yeah, let’s do that.

MATT: That was what? July 6th and it was Gretchen Carlson, another previous FOX employee, filed a lawsuit against Roger Ailes – just Roger Ailes.

NASIR: She was that co-host at Fox & Friends if you ever watched that. Did you ever watch that show?

MATT: No, I don’t watch any of those shows.

NASIR: I actually find FOX News entertaining – not for news purpose, just entertaining in general. But, anyway, go ahead.

MATT: Yeah. I mean, I guess there are some questions of whether she could consider some of these people her friends based on the title of the show, especially Steve Doocy.

NASIR: I don’t know his name, but it is spelled D-O-O-C-Y so I’m not sure how else to pronounce that.

MATT: She worked on a bunch of different segments and shows but you mentioned FOX & Friends but she was an employee of FOX and Roger Ailes is the chairman and CEO of FOX News so that’s where we’re starting. But it’s something to say right off the bat is the lawsuit’s only against him and not against 21st Century FOX or anyone else – just Roger Ailes. That’s something we’ll circle back around to.

So, she files this complaint and it centers around just basically a bunch of repeated instances of sexual harassment. I’m not as familiar with Gretchen Carlson’s career as you might be having watched the different shows but – at least what’s alleged in the complaint and what I’ve read elsewhere – she was pretty likeable, pretty successful at what she did – I mean on the shows she was on.

NASIR: I suppose. I mean, according to her, I mean, she was on a pretty popular show. But I think she was replaced by Hasselbeck – I forgot her first name.

MATT: Elizabeth Hasselbeck?

NASIR: Yeah, Elizabeth Hasselbeck – either replaced or pushed aside, so to speak.

MATT: I think the allegations in here might be part of the reason why.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: So, she was working with FOX – you know, these different shows. We’ll link the complaint because there’s more detail in there and we’re not going to go through all the different allegations that she is asserting against Roger Ailes – and, I guess, at this point, we should say they are just allegations – he’s denied everything. At this point, you know, there has not been any sort of responsive pleading to the complaint yet. So, at this point, it is strictly allegations so we will say that so we won’t get in trouble.

NASIR: You won’t get in trouble. I’ll say it all day.

MATT: I think it all kind of started with – or one of the things it started with – was her co-host which is the Steve Doocy. There’s a couple of instances of him doing things to her I think specifically putting his hand on her and putting her arm to shush her during a live telecast – you know, amongst other things. She had problems with that so she approached Ailes and just wanted to inform him of what was going on and that’s really where it kind of started and that, based on what’s in the complaint, he didn’t take her too seriously – not only that, that’s when some of the sexist remarks from him or gestures started popping up.

Nasir and Matt talk about the changes at Starbucks that have led to many disgruntled employees and customers.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist.

My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And we are talking about our second favorite food item, I would say, right? After pizza. Would you say? Coffee.

MATT: Is that a food?

NASIR: No, uh… that’s true.

MATT: I guess you could freeze it and then eat it, but it seems more like a beverage.

NASIR: Well, you know what I mean – at least we talk about it. I know you and I tend to talk about coffee a lot for some reason, too. It seems like it comes up. I don’t know if it’s on the podcast or otherwise. Or we’re just happy to be drinking coffee at a coffee shop.

MATT: Well, it’s possible. I mean, I don’t like Starbucks – which is what we’re going to talk about today – and I think I’ve mentioned that many times how it’s more of a convenience. Basically, if I need coffee and it’s the only option available, that’s the only time I go there. Even when people want to meet at Starbucks, I’m always reluctant and try to go somewhere else.

NASIR: Try to go somewhere else.

MATT: I don’t really necessarily try. I mean, now, I oftentimes just suggest where we should go.

NASIR: It’s not that I don’t like Starbucks nor do I like it. it’s just that I have had great coffee and there’s a difference but I’m also very tolerable to different degrees of quality.

MATT: Yeah, that’s the thing. I will say, I mean, I only drink iced coffee.

NASIR: That makes a big difference.

MATT: Their cold brew that they’ve had this last year – maybe more than that – is actually not bad. I’ll give them that.

NASIR: Okay, we’ll give them that.

MATT: Yeah, I can drink that. I don’t drink hot drinks so maybe that’s the problem.

NASIR: Maybe they’ll be a successful company now that they have some good iced beverages.

MATT: Yeah, I was looking up the numbers for how many stores they have. We can get to that in a bit.

NASIR: How many stores do they have?

MATT: More than 23,000 in 2015.

NASIR: Wow.

MATT: Looks like about half of that…

NASIR: Half of them are right next to each other.

MATT: They’re on the same block, basically.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: About half of that looks like to be US locations but that number is a year older. I don’t know. It’s somewhere in there. But it’s quite a bit, obviously.

Let’s get into this.

First, it all kind of stems from this – I assume it’s a barista who started this post – basically saying the morale at Starbucks amongst the people working there is at a low – maybe an all-time low – or at least it’s sinking because a slew of issues, the first of which being the hours that the baristas are working there. I think it’s well-documented that Starbucks offers benefits to its employees which I think has been a huge selling point for a long time now. It’s something they’ve gotten a lot of praise for. But, if you work there for the requirement to get those benefits or you have to work at least 20 hours a week so obviously the workers want to do that, but I would guess that most of the people working there probably see this as a full-time job just because, if you’re working a minimum 20 hours a week during the day, I mean, it’s tough to work two part-time jobs – just from a logistics standpoint – to make it all sort out.

The problem that it looks like a lot of these workers are having are it’s very difficult to work more than 25 hours a week there based on the scheduling that’s been done in recent months or I don’t know how long it’s been going on but that seems to be the case.

NASIR: I think for a little bit now.

And so, one of the reasons we’re talking about this is because this barista – like you were saying – Jaime Prater, he started this campaign on this website. I’ve never heard of it. it’s called coworker.org and it’s basically an open letter to Starbucks where you can get multiple signat...