Nasir and Matt discuss a rare win for California employers and when they can seek expense reimbursement for voluntary employee training.

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: Episode 253. This is a monumental episode. I think it’s the highest episode number we’ve ever done.

MATT: I don’t know. It could be.

NASIR: I think so.

MATT: You’re just saying that because I’m recording this from a plane, right? Physically, the highest I’ve ever been up off the ground.

NASIR: Altitude-wise, it’s the highest.

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: Correct, exactly.

MATT: Definitely 253 is the highest number-wise because we record going up. But, yeah, I think altitude-wise, this has to be the highest. But we’ve actually evened it out because I think you said you were in Death Valley recording this so I don’t know. Who knows?

NASIR: So, two milestones, definitely put it in the books.

But, today, what are we talking about today, Matt? Give us a little taste of the topic here.

MATT: People may not have listened to this before or might not be in California or experienced any sort of business or competition in California. The general idea is any sort of restraint against competition – I’ll use the word “competition” generally not enforceable and we’ve talked about different ways where, you know, it can be considered that and with trade secrets, you know, things like that.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: We had a decision – and this was end of January here – that kind of changed this a little bit. Let me just get into kind of the facts behind this. I’m just going to abbreviate. UPI is how they abbreviate it but USS-POSCO Industries, they faced a vacancy in this certain type of skilled worker that they need – if someone really is interested, maintenance, technical, electrical MTE workers. Here’s what they did; they needed to find these people. It’s a highly skilled area so they needed to train these people which, generally speaking, if you have employees and you’re going to train them, you have to compensate them for that.

This program they created, 135 weeks of instruction, 90 weeks of job training, and 45 weeks of classroom work – pretty substantial. Cost was also pretty substantial; $46,000 per employee that they estimated this program cost.

NASIR: Geez.

MATT: It’s pretty significant. I mean, I think that’s higher than the median family income in San Diego last year which is crazy.

During this time, the employees still got paid their regular wages. This was kind of in addition to train them, I assume, for this higher level or more technical side of it. If they completed the program, they would be assigned to this MTE vacancy and that was that.

But the thing to keep in mind here is participation in this was voluntary because they still had their normal position, but this would be a higher skilled position where I assume they would get much higher pay than they did before. I don’t know the exact numbers but I think that’s safe to say.

NASIR: Do you know if the training was while they were working or was it outside? The reason I’m asking is because you mentioned, generally, if you’re training an employee, you have to pay them – unless, like, there’s a four-factor test, right? If it’s voluntarily, if it’s outside of regular work hours, and not directly related to the employee’s job, and that the employee doesn’t perform any productive work during that. It’s a little ambiguous about that but it seems like these guys did it during their employment and they were paid their regular wage. And so, really, the main factor we’re talking about here is that it’s voluntary. It may not have been enough to not pay them for that training time but we’re talking about something a little bit different here.

MATT: No, and that’s a good point. That’s why one of the important things to see here is that it was, in fact,

Nasir and Matt talk about Yahoo's quarterly performance review system andwhy it was flawed from day one.

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, and…

MATT: I wasn’t quick enough there.

My name is Matt Staub.

You gave me a fraction of a second to say something and I hesitated.

NASIR: Well, I give you a one out of five then in your performance review.

MATT: Ah, well, very pertinent to what we’re talking about today.

NASIR: Yeah, that’ what I do.

MATT: That could end up being all right based on this stacked ranking system. I believe it’s kind of a bell curve on how all of this works but was it the QPR Quarterly Progress Report?

NASIR: Yeah, this makes my eyes roll. It’s some kind of corporate program that it needs an acronym to it.

MATT: Well, yeah, this isn’t the first time this has been implemented and I think some other big companies have run into similar issues before but one thing that Marissa Mayer did when she came into Yahoo was install these quarterly performance reviews. What did I say, “quarterly progress report”? I was one-third of the way correct.

NASIR: You got the quarterly correct.

MATT: Well, I got the QPR. I just hadn’t opened up the article yet to remember what it was.

So, they have this rating system to rank the employees and there’s a couple of issues that are going on here. One, well, the person that ultimately brought the lawsuit is claiming a couple of things but one of which is that this stacked ranking system is just unfair in general. Two, I think this probably would be the bigger one, the scores or this rating system was manipulated and there’s a few issues with that but it was manipulated to then I guess give some sort of legitimate grounds for terminating people and the number of people that were terminated is also another problem involved in all this but it all kind of comes back to this rating system. I mean, I don’t know how much you want to talk about that and the actual rating system itself on how fair it is.

NASIR: Well, yeah, let’s talk…

The rating system is like, it’s so silly. Honestly, it really represents Yahoo as a company because I don’t think it’s ironic – or I don’t think it’s a coincidence, I should say – that around the time that the stack ranking – like, which Matt said, it’s literally a one to five rating, bell curve – that means only so many people can get fives, only so many people can get fours, et cetera, and one, and most everyone’s going to get threes. And so, this system was pretty much abolished by Microsoft and GE. As they were ditching it, Yahoo was starting it. It’s very reminiscent to Yahoo as a company. I mean, they always seem to be kind of late in the game. Frankly, if you’re kind of late to the game compared to Microsoft and GE, I mean, that’s telling you something.

MATT: Yeah, and it just reminds me and I know there are some schools that this is the way they do all their classes. I took a class in college – some accounting course, I can’t remember which one – it was the same sort of concept. It was like, well, you’re going to take the exams and the top ten percent are going to get an A – or maybe it was the top twenty percent – the next thirty are going to get a B, the next thirty are going to get a C, ten percent D, and ten percent fail. So, ten percent automatically failed every single exam. To be fair, I thought that was ridiculous until the exams all ended up being tough so definitely more than ten percent of people failed every exam so it kind of worked itself out in that aspect.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: But, in terms of people’s jobs, I mean, I don’t know what percent applies here but let’s say everyone that worked for Yahoo was a good to great employee – which probably wasn’t the case, it definitely wasn’t the case but let’s say it was – you have to throw people into this bottom. I mean, there’s a top, there’s a middle, and there’s a bottom.

The guys take the court to discuss the recent lawsuit against a video game company claiming copyright infringement over tattoos on NBA players' bodies.

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 I have zero tattoos. How many tattoos do you have?

MATT: 32.

NASIR: 32. Actually, you know, I just read, by the way – I don’t know what made me think of this but – someone ranked the best football cities and I think San Diego is ranked, like, 34 or 32 or something like that. I don’t know how it goes, but there’s only like, 30-something teams in the country, right?

MATT: Yeah. Well, there’s 32 teams so I hope they weren’t 34th.

NASIR: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was 32.

MATT: Well, so there’s a couple of things – well, it wouldn’t matter because they’re either going to count Saint Louis or they’re going to count Los Angeles. But New York has two teams.

NASIR: Does that count as two cities? No, they did best or worse cities.

MATT: They played different spots.

NASIR: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Well, let’s not analyze it too much. The point is that you have the same number of tattoos as the rank of San Diego in their fan base.

MATT: Well, you figured it out. I have all 32 NFL logos tattooed.

NASIR: Okay, perfect.

Well, actually, I mean, that may be a copyright violation. Did you think about that before you put it on?

MATT: Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s something I did want to bring up. It’s kind of a second layer. If this episode was an onion, this would be the second layer of what I was going to discuss here.

NASIR: What if it was an orange? Same thing – second layer?

MATT: Maybe. It could just be the peel or the rind – whatever that is.

NASIR: Okay.

MATT: Yeah, but the actual juice of this episode is the deal with the tattoos. It’s something I never thought about before. You know, when I go out and get my 32 tattoos, you know, obviously, it’s on my body, but who owns the tattoo of the artwork that’s done on the individual? I never really thought about it at all until I saw this lawsuit this past week with the NBA. Well, I don’t think it’s even with the NBA. I don’t think there’s any players involved either. I think the actual lawsuit is…

NASIR: With the videogame maker, right?

MATT: Yeah, the creators of NBA 2K are getting sued by this company that did the tattoos.

NASIR: They bought the license or the copyright ownership from all these tattoo artists, actually.

MATT: Okay. Is that who it is?

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Are they the company that employed or the house artist that did it?

NASIR: No, I think what they did was they wanted to license out these tattoo images – who knows why? Maybe other people wanted to get these same images as a fan. And so, I think it was Solid Oak Sketches. They purchased. They went to these different tattoo artists and actually bought the rights to that particular art piece – that copyright image.

MATT: I saw that there were these licensing agreements from the artists and this company that ultimately sued but the point is this company sued NBA 2K – whoever has the ownership in that – for copyright infringement because what this game is doing is it has all these NBA players and, you know, it’s 2016 so it gets better. The graphics get better every year.

NASIR: By the way, that’s debatable. If anyone plays sports games, it’s like, “Yeah, you can see one more freckle than you did before.” Well, this is my area, right? At least we’re getting into videogames and you can talk the sports stuff. But, from the videogame perspective, it’s kind of frustrating because, you know, especially with Madden, it’s like every year they come up with something new and try to make the graphics a little bit better but, really, you know, we’re still pretty far from where we need to be, I think. I mean, really, we want just realistic, you know,

Nasir and Matt celebrate episode 250 by discussing the Department of Labor opinion about joint employment and how to distinguish between horizontal and vertical joint employment.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to Regally – uh, regally? Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business.

I’m your king, Nasir Pasha, and this is where we talk about… I don’t know, I’m so off now. This is the podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.

MATT: I’m Matt Staub and I thought I was on mute for a second – all sorts of off.

NASIR: We’re so off. Horrible beginning but we’re going to keep recording.

MATT: We’ll be fine.

NASIR: I think that’s actually the first mistake we’ve ever had in this podcast now that I think about it.

MATT: It’s not bad. This is the 250th episode so one mistake every 250, I’ll take that. It’s a pretty good success rate.

NASIR: Did we forget to do something special for 250?

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: Of course.

MATT: I just had lunch with a couple of people and they asked about the podcast. They actually asked – I’m not making this up.

NASIR: Okay, yeah.

MATT: I said, “Well, yeah, we’re actually recording 250 later today.” It seemed pretty impressive when I said that to them.

NASIR: Not as impressive now that we’re actually in it.

MATT: 300 will be pretty big because that’s your favorite movie.

NASIR: Mostly the second one, though. What is it – 301? I don’t know.

MATT: Is that a parody?

NASIR: No, there was a sequel to it. It’s horrible. Not that the first one’s that great, too. I mean, I think the first one, you know, didn’t have much of substance to it but it was kind of eye candy, you know?

MATT: Well, when we talk about employment law, we usually talk about the same few things. It’s obviously employees and independent contractors.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Wrongful termination, discrimination, things like that. What we’re going to talk about today, I think is going to become a pretty big issue in the employment front and I don’t think it gets talked about too often and maybe that’s the reason that we – just this past week or two weeks ago – the Department of Labor came out with this. It’s not new law; it’s really just an explanation or it goes into more detail about the topic of joint employment which I don’t think many businesses are even aware of this – outside of the ones that probably fit the idea.

NASIR: Even if they’re not aware of it, I think more and more businesses are entering this world and where these types of relationships kind of occur is where you have one person, an employee, that has so-called loyalties or obligations or are being controlled by two different entities. Where that line is drawn and what kind of liability that’s exposed is what really the Department of Labor has kind of shared their opinion on.

MATT: I think that’s a good way to describe it or to sum it up very briefly is when more than one business is involved in the work being performed by somebody and they might possibly have two separate employers and that’s when the whole joint employment analysis comes into play. This isn’t a situation where, you know, I have my normal 9 to 5 job during the day and then I go moonlight at night working wherever.

NASIR: Burger King?

MATT: I was trying to pick somewhere that’s open… I guess it’s open late? I don’t know. I don’t know the last time I’ve been to Burger King.

NASIR: Wait, you do work at Burger King, don’t you?

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: I thought that’s what you do in the evenings. I always call you and I always hear people talking in the background, ordering French fries. But, yeah, that’s completely different because, obviously, the owner of Burger King – or I should say Burger King and the other employer – really have no relation to each other so we’re talking about real true joint employment. And so, the Department of Labor has – and we’ll talk about the significance of this in a second but let’s just figure out, okay,

Nasir and Matt discussthe different waysthat Netflix and 24 Hour Fitness handled backing out of grandfather pricing to customers.

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: Today, we’re covering a very interesting topic, but you’re going to have wait to see what it is.

MATT: I can see that you think subscription-based or monthly pricing or whatever you want to call it is an interesting topic.

NASIR: Well, honestly, I didn’t name the topic because I wasn’t sure exactly how to summarize the topic. I just know we get to talk about Netflix and 24 Hour Fitness.

MATT: We’ll get into the Netflix part of it first.

I guess, for people that pay or for people that have been signed up, 2014 or before that, they were paying $7.99 a month which I believe is what I pay. I’m not positive but I think that’s when I signed up. I don’t know. I don’t even know when I signed up.

NASIR: I know I used to pay $7.99 a month but I kept giving away my username and password to family and friends that I ended up using Netflix one of these days and it said that there was too many users on or something like that so I upgraded from there to where you can pay more to have access to more screens or whatever. But I’m pretty sure I was paying $7.99. I don’t know what I’m paying now. It’s probably like a billion dollars per month.

MATT: Probably not that much because I think it’s only going up to, well, the most someone was paying was $9.99 a month.

NASIR: Oh, good. I can afford that.

MATT: Yeah, that’s what the more recent people are paying. Now that I think about it, I want to say… I don’t know if it was Netflix or maybe it was somewhere else that put up a promotion somewhat recently of “sign up now and you can get this lower rate” and I’ll get to why that’s relevant but what Netflix has now come out and said is, “Anyone that’s paying $7.99 a month, it’s going to get bumped up to $9.99 a month. You know, the silver lining is we’re going to still give you two full years of that $7.99.” I guess I shouldn’t say that fully. You can stay on the $7.99 a month plan but you’re only getting standard definition. For anyone that wants to watch in HD which has got to most people, it’s going to go up to $9.99.

NASIR: So, it’s effectively a downgrade though because, with $7.99, you had access to HD, right?

MATT: Right.

NASIR: It is a downgrade.

MATT: It is definitely a downgrade. You could technically still stay on $7.99 a month, though. You just get a lesser version of what you had.

NASIR: Got it.

MATT: But they’re giving you two years before they do that so they’re giving you a little bit of notice here and it is a month to month arrangement so I guess you could still jump on the $7.99 a month for two years and then back out if you’re really upset about the $2.00 per month increase which is what, $24.00 a year?

NASIR: Approximately.

MATT: But it’s the principle of the thing and I think that’s why a lot of people are complaining about it now as, “Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a $7.99-a-month arrangement. You’re supposed to be grandfathered into this price. Why do I have to pay more for this now?” and we’re going to get into 24 Hour Fitness which might be one of the bigger culprits of this scheme but, to me, they’re giving you the two years of kind of a buffer to figure out if you want to stay on or not. I mean, that’s about as fair as you’re going to get.

NASIR: Yeah, that’s reasonable, and it’s a couple of dollars, like you said, approximately $24.00 more per year if you’re doing your math correctly. I can’t verify that but, yeah, I mean, it’s reasonable and, frankly, I’m pretty sure, without looking at the contract, I mean, Netflix is month to month and we can cancel at any time and, therefore, so can they and they can increase the price at any time. And so,

Nasir and Matt throw the pigskin around in discussing the Minnesota Vikings' allegations that Wells Fargo is photobombing their new U.S. Bank Stadium. Nasir also gives the Chargers a proper eulogy.

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 welcome to another football episode even though the season’s ending.

MATT: Well, I mean, actually, it’s not really ending. I mean, we’re kind of going right into the most exciting part of the year. I guess, for you, it’s ending because (1) your local team just got crushed last weekend – I guess, by the time this comes out, the previous weekend – lost 30-0 at home. And then, your favorite team is no longer going to exist anymore. So, I guess, for you, it really is ending.

NASIR: It’s true. It’s been a bad year for myself and football. I’ve pretty much given up on the Chargers. Of course, my wife’s upset at me about it because it feels like I don’t have any loyalty but, hey, the Chargers have given no loyalty to me and they’re moving to Los Angeles now – or at least that’s what they’re trying to do. I think, as of today, there might be a chance that there might be one more year here until they make a deal with St. Louis which would be a very awkward year, by the way.

MATT: I don’t get how they’re expecting that to go over. I mean, from my perspective, the people I’ve spoken to that are big Chargers fans in San Diego have kind of already said their goodbyes and they’ve given into the fact that the Chargers are going to be gone. So, now, it’s possible they might come back for this weird in-between year before they go to LA. I just can’t see people signing up for that – the season ticketholders. I don’t know. The real die-hards might a lot of people are just going to back out of that.

NASIR: I think the ones that are not going to root for the Los Angeles Chargers – or whatever they’re going to be named – are probably not going to be too kind to them this next year if they stay in San Diego. But there is going to be a portion of fans – and, apparently, including my wife – that are going to follow the Chargers to Los Angeles and good luck to them.

MATT: What it’s going to be is next year it’s the same thing. It’s going to be in LA and it’s basically going to be a gigantic game for all the away fans because both San Diego and LA are cities with a lot of people not from there. So, whatever team is playing there, they’re going to load the stadium with their fans and that’s what it’s going to be.

NASIR: And then, ten years from now, they’ll probably come back from Los Angeles after failing there.

MATT: Well, I think the interest is still there in San Diego if they would have been able to build a new stadium but too late, I guess.

NASIR: Yeah, too late.

MATT: So, let’s talk about another stadium that actually is getting built – I believe it’s going to be ready for next season – that’s in Minnesota. Was it US Bank?

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Stadium? US Bank Arena? It’s probably US Bank Stadium, I’m guessing that’s what it’s called.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: That’s important because they’re going to have this nice, big, new, fancy stadium with the US Bank branded on top of it. It’s going to look really nice in the aerial.

NASIR: It’s a rooftop, of course.

MATT: Yeah, it’s going to look really nice in the aerial photos.

One thing that’s happening – and I think these other towers are getting built or maybe they were getting built at the time when US Bank Stadium got approved – is Wells Fargo is also building or has these high-rises I think that are seven-stories high – something to that effect. And so, let me back up a little bit.

The Vikings are building the stadium and basically went around to the neighboring businesses – Iguess entered into agreements with them in terms of signage, things like that – whilst one of the nearby buildings is Wells...

Nasir explains his experience at a local sandwich shop, Relish Fine Foods, and the guys speculate as to how the cafe is restricted from allowing customers to eat on the premises.

Check out the Relish website here:www.relishhouston.com

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we coiver business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And, this episode – I feel like I was about to go in a more formal introduction like, “In this episode, we’re going to talk about…” but when do we ever do that?

MATT: Not often.

NASIR: Not often.

MATT: Or maybe ever I guess. I don’t know if we have.

NASIR: Yeah, just look at the title and people know what we’re talking about, whatever the title may be.

MATT: This isn’t a TV show where you do a preview.

NASIR: Yeah, an introduction or a preview and then they show clips of the podcast.

MATT: Yes, some podcasts do have… ours aren’t long enough so it wouldn’t really make sense but some of them will have a line or two from the episode at the beginning.

NASIR: Yeah, I remember Zero did that, I think, did they? I’m trying to remember. Or maybe they did it for the past episode. We should have an update from the last episode even though one episode has nothing to do with the other.

MATT: We recorded two back-to-back. I don’t know how much of an update we could do from one to the other.

NASIR: Well, we can give an update of what’s happened with that fundraiser on GoFundMe for the last story. They’ve raised $5.00 more.

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: Anyway, I guess I should start out with this, right?

MATT: Yeah, this is all you. I can sit back on this one.

NASIR: Okay. Well, don’t sit back too much because you’re the one who usually does the intro.

Anyway, there’s a restaurant – by the way, using the word “restaurant,” I use it very loosely – there’s a place where you buy food, okay? It’s around the corner from the office and it’s called Relish, I think. it’s been there for as long as I’ve been living here – which hasn’t been long – a few years, at least. It’s this food establishment. It’s kind of like a deli but not really. A lot of fresh ingredients and food and, also, it’s a little pricey. It’s in a nice neighborhood or whatever. I go there the other day and they have this flyer on one of the walls near the cash register and, of course, I don’t read this until they ask me, you know, I order my sandwich and they me, “To go or for here?” and I say, “To go.” I read this flyer and it says, “To our valued customers, we are sorry to inform you that food may not be consumed on these premises.”

Of course, I’m thinking, “Okay, I guess I can’t eat here, but then why did they ask me whether I should eat here or not?” And then, they say, “This is due to a provision in our lease that our landlord and other food tenants on the property have decided to strictly enforce. We will be open for takeaway until further notice,” and then, in the next paragraph, it says, “We are actively seeking a different location close-by where this will not be the case. We look forward to continuing to serve you and hope to find a new location very soon. Thank you for understanding. – Relish Team.”

Of course, then I look to my right and left and I see there were some tables there. There was never that much seating in the first place and there was a couple of tables there with chairs – like, high chairs, but those high chairs are gone – but then they have stools like at Starbucks or whatever, they have a bar on the window and they have a bunch of stools and I see a couple of people sitting there, eating, with their bags. So, of course, I’m confused. I overhear somebody, he’s like, “Oh, can we eat here?” “Yeah, we just have to pack it to go.” I was like, “Okay, that’s weird.” Then, I was like, “Oh, so you guys are moving?” They’re like, “Yeah, we’ve moving,” and they told me they were moving down… it’s actually not that close-by but relatively close-by.

Nasir and Matt kick off 2016 by discussing how one Indianapolis bar responded to a negative post on its Facebook page.

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, please, forgive Matt because he just informed me that he’s rearranging his room. I’m not sure what that has to do with the podcast but, for some reason, it was important to tell me about it so I thought I’d share that with you as well.

MATT: Well, just in case, I thought you’d have more excitement for, well, none of the episodes ran in 2016 yet, I don’t think.

NASIR: Oh, yeah, we’re back! 2016. I think every year we talk about, you know, when it’s not okay to say “Happy New Year” but, I think, yeah, at least for right now, being the first week of January, this coming out the second week, I think we can say this is the happy new year episode.

MATT: We’re recording on the seventh so, I think, anything under a week, you’re fine.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: I think you’re safe. And so, good thing, we’re talking about the New Year because we have a New Year’s based story to discuss for today.

NASIR: Exactly.

MATT: We’ve been off a couple of weeks now, I think. there’s been a lot of really good legal-related things that have happened – none of which have been right up our alley – but this one’s pretty interesting and it comes from, I guess, my home city in a way – Indianapolis – and a place I’ve actually been to so I’m somewhat familiar with it.

Let me tell you what happened. There’s this restaurant bar in Indianapolis called Kilroys and I don’t know what the situation was for New Year’s. I’m guessing they just had a bunch of people there. It’s a pretty popular bar and restaurant as is so I’m imagining it was pretty packed. I guess what happened was, an older woman – it’s up for debate how old she was, reading through the story and some other ones…

NASIR: Like, they can’t find her birth certificate?

MATT: Well… So, the first couple of things I’ve seen – at least in the response from the owner or the manager – was she was over 70 years old, but then I saw somewhere else she was only 57 but we’ll say over 50.

NASIR: Oh, okay.

MATT: So, it was a woman over 50, apparently she had a heart attack. They had to bring in people to come in and work on her in the middle of this big thing, terrible thing.

NASIR: Wow. Way to kill the New Year’s, huh?

MATT: Yeah. So, this girl that was at the bar was not happy with the situation – and I’m trying to see what time she wrote this because I bet it’s, yeah – she wrote it at 1:51 a.m. New Year’s Day so a couple of hours after and most likely with a couple of drinks in her probably, I would have to guess. She wrote this scathing review, just incredibly upset about what happened. I’m not going to read the whole review but basically…

NASIR: Read some of it at least, yeah.

MATT: Yeah, I’m going to pick and choose.

NASIR: Okay.

MATT: She says she’s never going to come back, after the way her and her friends spent over $700 to have their meal ruined by watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose. “My night’s been ruined.” Blah blah blah. I mean, that’s basically the gist of it, I think. Basically, she’s saying, “My night was ruined because somebody overdosed in the bar and had to be taken out and they died and it was a terrible event.” I don’t know why she would assume somebody overdosed at a bar but I guess that’s for her to make any effort to see who it was or whatever. So, she complains, writes this message on Facebook – this is on their Facebook page, you know, less than two hours into the New Year – and, at the time this was screenshotted, there was only a few reviews – sorry, a few comments. I’d imagine there was a lot more than that.

NASIR: Actually, it was taken down.

MATT: Yeah, and now I’m trying to find the one.

The point is, the manager ended up writing a response to this.

The guys welcome Edreace Purmul to discuss Quentin Tarantino's problem with Hollywood's Cinerama Domeallegedly backing out of its agreement to show his movie in lieu of Star Wars.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/_pd6yO-jBRo[/youtube]

Edreace Purmul graduated from San Diego State University’s Film and Business school in 2006. His first debut into the cinema limelight incidentally was also his first film attempt post-graduation. His micro-budget feature film MOZLYM received immediate international acclaim and interest for its controversial and socially conscious appeal. MOZLYM received a Nomination for Best Picture in 2008 at the Cairo International Film Festival and won the Audience Favorite award at Riverside International Film Festival. It also was selected for official competition at International Film Festival Thailand, South Africa Film Festival, and British Film Festival of Los Angeles, where Purmul received multiple nominations for Best First Time Director.

Check out Edreace'slatest film here!

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 and this time we’re joined with a Star Wars expert, Matt Staub, right?

MATT: You know, you’ve said many different things for me. This was probably the one that’s farthest from the truth.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: I’m trying to think of some of the other ones you’ve said for me in the past like make-up expert. I think mine might be closer to that than Star Wars expert, unfortunately. So, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to offer on this but we’ll see what happens.

NASIR: No. In fact, I’m pretty sure we talked last week about covering this episode and you’ve only seen the old ones which is forgivable because the new ones aren’t as good and we can kind of get into that discussion but it seems like you weren’t too familiar with it so I went ahead and got my own expert – since I knew you’d be lacking – my good friend, Edreace Purmul. He’s an independent filmmaker in San Diego.

Edreace, are you there?

EDREACE: Yes, I am!

NASIR: Nice. Welcome to the podcast.

EDREACE: Thank you guys for having me.

NASIR: No problem.

So, Edreace, Star Wars… This new film, is it going to be good, bad, or to be determined?

EDREACE: Star Wars is kind of one of those unique – I guess you could say – sagas or series that the properties that it carries in terms of fan base and how it’s made and who’s behind it is very different than something that’s a little bit more consecutive because it’s spread out over the span of, you know, we’re talking 1976, it had its own fan base. George Lucas had his own – you know, he has his take on what he wanted to do with it and, really, the first Star Wars was not really called Episode IV. That’s not how it started. He actually just created the idea and didn’t really think about if this thing became a sequel. And so, after it kind of struck gold, then he started to kind of look at it and say, “Okay, let’s map it out.” But then, thirty years later, there’s a reboot and there’s another trilogy that’s part of the same clause, I guess, but you have completely different takes on it and you have a lot of jaded Star Wars fans who are like, “This is not the Star Wars I remember.” It got to a point where, you know, one of the reasons why Lucas even claims he left and basically sold it to Disney was he kind of lost control over what he thought was his own creative vision because the world had kind of owned it at this point and they were telling him, “You should have done this and you should have done that.” I think him kind of surrendering the reins to J.J. Abrams and Disney, it’s probably just going to feel different, in my opinion. I know J.J. Abrams, one of his goals was to try to really make it feel like the Star Wars that inspired him when he was young. I think he saw Star Wars when he was like eleven or something. And so, there’s a little bit of hope I guess for some of the older Star Wars fans ...

Nasir and Matt discuss new laws that will go into effect for 2016 and how employers should adjust their practices accordingly.

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. Welcoming my co-host who happens to be an expert on time travel of what’s going to happen in the future.

MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. I guess it kind of makes sense.

NASIR: Kinda?

MATT: Well, I’m looking forward to this episode because you were just going to tell me all the new laws for 2016 and I was going to comment on them I believe was the plan.

NASIR: Let me just open this big book of new law. I mean, we’re focusing on some of the labor laws for California only. Granted, California is crazy but, if you have employees in multiple states but just if you have one employee in California, then there’s a lot of new issues you have to deal with.

MATT: Actually, that’s a question a lot of clients ask. “Are there any new labor laws that I need to be aware of for the new year?” Just a common time that new things get implemented.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Obviously, there’s a whole slew of laws that get passed and are new every year but the labor laws in particular are the ones that we usually talk about and we’re going to talk about a little bit of that and then there’s some other laws – ah, I guess it relates to labor, too.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Which actually is way more interesting than some of these California ones and compared to previous, you know, at least the last couple of years, because I think we’ve done this, for the couple of years we’ve done the podcast I think this’ll be the third end of the year we’ve been doing this and I think this is the third end-of-the-year we’ve done new laws for the next year.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: I’d say, at least from the California side on the labor law, this is definitely the tamest.

NASIR: That’s true, but there’s a lot of little things and, if someone asks what laws they need to know, there’s not a lot of laws that are passing that are really crucial to an employer but there are a lot of little things that have been passed that kind of adds a headache for us, I suppose.

MATT: Yeah, this isn’t like last year or I guess the beginning of 2015 when the paid sick leave was obviously really big in California.

NASIR: And I think minimum wage was around that time, too.

MATT: Yeah. So, there’s a couple of big things. I mean, to me, from the employer’s side, the biggest law to me is one we’ve already discussed previously this year – at least we touched on it from what I remember. I don’t know if there’s a bill – Bill 258, I don’t think that’s very helpful, whatever this is called.

NASIR: That’s how I reference it.

MATT: There’s a lot to it. One of the things is this equality in pay regardless of gender and we touched on this before and, thinking about it a little bit since then, the way it’s kind of laid out is employers are I think still are going to be able to get by on this – at least when I say “this,” I mean paying men and women different amounts despite the fact that they can’t. At least initially, just reading through some of these criteria, the idea is men and women, if they’re performing substantially similar work have to get paid the say. You know, they can’t have a difference in pay. But employers can base things on seniority – okay, that’s fine; merit system – that’s kind of vague; a system that measures earning by quantity or quality of production – quantity is much more concrete than quality of production, that’s pretty subjective; and then a bona fide factor other than sex such as education, training, experience. My point is there’s a lot there. It’s not a loophole I would say but there’s a lot of wiggle room for employers. I think it’ll help a little bit but I still can see employers can find ways around this.

NASIR: Oh, absolutely. Frankly though, I don’t think the law is going to fix that problem, right?