WIRTW #803: the 'Tubthumping' edition

🎶 I get knocked down, but I get up again… 🎶

Like just about everyone else of a certain age, I know every word to Tubthumping. It's one of those songs that still somehow finds its way into bars, sporting events, wedding receptions, and random playlists nearly 30 years later.

And because of that, I always assumed Chumbawamba was exactly what it appeared to be: a one-hit wonder with one incredibly catchy song.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

The other night, after Tubthumping came on while we were driving home from dinner, I asked Siri to play more Chumbawamba.

I was completely unprepared for what came next.

Why did no one ever tell me that Chumbawamba is actually a really good band?

I expected a few more songs that sounded like Tubthumping. Instead, I got a musical identity crisis—in the best possible way.

Punk? Yes.
Techno? Yes.
New wave? Yes.
Folk? Yes.
Choral music? Somehow… yes.

Their catalog lurches from one genre to another with complete confidence, and yet it all somehow works. It's chaotic, unpredictable, and more creative than I ever would have guessed from the band that gave us one of the biggest singalong anthems of the 1990s.

Then I did what we all do after discovering something unexpected: I went to Wikipedia.

Turns out Chumbawamba spent decades as an anarchist collective, releasing fiercely political albums long before Tubthumping accidentally made them international stars. They never really seemed interested in becoming famous, and after cashing the checks from their one massive hit, they largely went back to making exactly the music they wanted to make.

Honestly, that explains a lot. Tubthumping wasn't the beginning or the end of the story. It was just the one song that happened to break through.

Sometimes the internet gets it wrong.
Sometimes radio gets it wrong.
Sometimes we get it wrong.

Sometimes a band you dismissed as a one-hit wonder has an entire catalog that's smarter, stranger, and far more interesting than the one song everyone remembers.

I think there's a workplace lesson buried in all of this. We all have a tendency to reduce people to a single data point—the one presentation, the one mistake, the one success, the one reputation. But people are almost always more complicated than that.

The best managers stay curious long after everyone else has stopped paying attention.

So, employers, stay curious. You never know what you might discover when you look beyond the one thing everyone else remembers.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

DEI is not a get-out-of-summary-judgment-free card — but it can become evidence of discrimination

A white man gets fired. His employer has a DEI program. Therefore, the DEI program caused his termination.

That argument has become increasingly common in employment discrimination cases. It's also usually not enough.

But Chavers v. WestRock Services shows what happens when a plaintiff brings more than complaints about corporate diversity goals.

"Boys will be boys" is not a harassment defense

The facts in Sharpe-Miller v. Walmart read less like a judicial opinion and more like an HR nightmare.

An assistant store manager allegedly told a gay employee, "Good—if homosexuals got any more rights, then we might as well legalize pedophilia and bestiality."

Coworkers regularly called him "f****ft," "butt pirate," and "Jerry the fairy." They mocked his walk, joked that he was "afraid to break a nail," made limp-wrist gestures whenever he passed, and one even called him a "pedophile."

Then someone drew a picture on the breakroom whiteboard with "F***T" scrawled across the figure's forehead.

When the employee reported it, his supervisor's response was to erase the drawing and say, "Boys will be boys."

AI Isn't the Problem. Lazy Lawyering Is.

Another day, another sanctions opinion involving a lawyer who filed AI-generated legal work product riddled with hallucinated cases.

This time, it's the 11th Circuit.

The court's opinion reads like something that should be satire but unfortunately isn't. Counsel submitted an opening brief citing at least eight nonexistent cases. After opposing counsel pointed out the problem, he tried to fix it by withdrawing the bad citations. Except the eight cases he "withdrew" weren't the same eight fake cases from his opening brief.

Worse still?

The replacement list consisted of eight more hallucinated cases.

You almost couldn't script it better.

Apple v. OpenAI offers a master class in spotting trade secret theft before it's too late

Apple's newly filed trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI contains an allegation that should make every employer's ears perk up.

According to the complaint, multiple departing Apple employees allegedly emailed Apple's confidential information to their personal email accounts on their way out the door. Apple also claims that some former employees later used Apple's confidential and trade secret information to help OpenAI develop competing hardware.

Whether Apple ultimately proves those allegations is for the courts to decide.

But the behavior it describes is one of the oldest—and most obvious—red flags in the employee-theft playbook.

When someone suddenly starts forwarding company files to Gmail the week before resigning, odds are they're not creating a personal scrapbook.

The good news is that employees who steal information often leave breadcrumbs. The key is knowing what to look for.

 

WIRTW #802: the 'it's a small world' edition

I love to travel. It's not just about the places you see or the things you do. It's also about the people you meet.

"Where are you from?" is one of the best conversation starters when you're traveling. That simple question just led to one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

My wife and I were on the ferry from Split to Korčula when a family sat down next to us, and we started chatting.

"So, where are you from?" the dad asked.

"Cleveland," my wife replied.

"But I grew up in Philly," I added.

"Philly? Me too," he said, giving me a fist bump.

"Where in Philly?"

"The Northeast."

"Same! Where did you go to high school?"

And that's when things got downright weird.

We didn't go to the same high school. As it turns out, he went to Central and I went to George Washington. But we both graduated in 1990, attended the same middle school, and discovered we have dozens of mutual friends. He even remembered my middle school homeroom number, a fact I had long forgotten.

Forty years after leaving Baldi Middle School, we finally became friends … on a ferry in Croatia. All because one of us asked a fellow traveler, "Where are you from?"

The world is a big place. Sometimes, though, it has a funny way of reminding us just how small it really is.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

When the boss gets involved, the investigation is already in trouble.

Last week, The New York Times published a deeply reported investigation alleging that Donald Trump personally intervened with FIFA President Gianni Infantino to have U.S. striker Folarin "Flo" Balogon’s red card suspended so he could play in the United States' World Cup Round of 16 match against Belgium.

Whether you're a soccer fan or not almost doesn’t matter.

The allegation is what matters.

The President of the United States allegedly used the weight of his office to influence what should have been an independent disciplinary decision. And according to the report, it worked.

That's not just a sports story. It's also a workplace investigation story.