Hot Take -- or Hot Mess?

At Improve Your HR, Suzanne Lucas notes the latest find in her "LinkedIn game" of spotting hot takes that obviously haven't been vetted by an expert:

A company where if you're 1 minute late to work, they make you stay an extra 2 hours!

She then proceeds to rip this to shreds over at Inc.

One thing that got my jaw to drop was the following:

20 minutes late, it's a PTO day

This reminds me of schools where the punishment for skipping school is suspension. Now, I presume Romero means employees would have to work and have it counted against their PTO bank, but I guarantee employees would just turn around and go home. Why go into the office if it will be counted as a PTO day?...

As soon as I saw that heading, I instantly imagined myself doing exactly what Lucas describes, and I'm not an HR professional.

This was the most obvious problem; many of the rest are not so obvious.

Lucas's demolition job is instructive in a time when contrarianism and questioning conventional wisdom are fashionable: There's some really stupid stuff out there that might sound good in the moment or get wide exposure for superficial reasons. (Here, I'd guess the severity of the punishments would appeal to a wide swath of people who aspire to be "no nonsense" or "hard-nosed" or "alpha male," from a place of wanting to be more assertive.)

There is no substitute for at least running such ideas through the thought experiment of imagining them being applied, and, especially if they're outside your expertise or experience, finding out what someone thinks who is an expert.

If something so obviously stupid is making the rounds, consider how many not-so-obviously stupid things also are.

-- CAV