Recruit Holdings' "Alleged" Cartel

This week on The Chad and Cheese Podcast (dubbed HR’s most dangerous podcast), hosts Chad Sowash, JT O’Donnell, and Maureen "Mo" Wiley Clough break down the latest corporate absurdities, dystopian AI trends, and labor market nonsense. Episode Highlights: No Trust for AI: Humanoid Robots, digital AI twins and Amazon's last-mile automation. Corporate AI Disasters: Amazon's tokenmaxxing problems. Japan’s Big Staffing Cartel Raid: Recruits, Adecco, Manpower, and others are under investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission for alleged price-fixing. The Death of Tip Culture: A look at US restaurants ditching traditional tipping. Dolly Parton vs. Dark Trends: The gang pays respect to the late, great Dolly Parton. In stark contrast to her generosity, the hosts call out "bro-brand" Good Good Golf and Callaway over an appalling, tone-deaf advertisement featuring a founder pushing a woman to the ground.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Meet Dave. Dave's resume says he's customer centric, a point of sale systems expert and a people leader. Reality check, Dave's resume was written by AI and AI applied to thousands of jobs while Dave was on his couch binging episodes of Jackass all day.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  How can you insert trust back into your hiring process? One word, Tatio. Tatio cuts through the BS by using real world job simulations, testing candidates so you can actually see how they perform the job before you waste a single minute interviewing or onboarding a fake. Insert trust back into your hiring process with Tatio. Check out Tatio today at T A T I O dot I O. That's T A T I O dot I O. That represents 860% increase over the allocated budget that was only detected some five months after the issue started.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Dude, really?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Five months?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Five months. Okay. So I was wondering how Anthropic's revenues were jumping so quickly, JT? Is this a bug or a feature?

• 1:14Speaker 02

  100% a feature, right? It's only as good as you program it. Oh, wow.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Give me that money.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. That's right, kids. Welcome to the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous podcast. I'm Chad, working nine to five. So wash.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  I'm JT. Someone needs to push good, good golf to the ground, O'Donnell.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And I'm Maureen, AKA Mo. You can't make old friends, Wiley Clough.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  That is, that's aggressive, JT. And on this week's show, recruit is allegedly price fixing, humanoid robots are kibitzing, and companies are deep sixing. Tips. Let's do this. It's commercial time. Okay, face it. Recruitment marketing is broken. 70% of paid recruitment media goes wasted. 93% of candidates bounce off your job ads before they even apply for the job. And this is not a talent problem. No, it's not a data problem. It's a targeting and experience problem. The beauty of this is companies aren't trying to fix it. They're transforming it. Hell, yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  With up to 80% more high quality applicants, 40% reduction in spend and 50% less recruiter time spent, they're realizing what's possible with recruitment marketing that actually works. So how'd they do it? Well, they chose Jovio, an AI-led, high-performance recruitment marketing platform built to eliminate waste and drive more results. With Jovio's AI agents, your job ads reach the right candidates while your career site, conversational AI and application process drive better candidates and conversions. What about those qualified candidates you've already bought and paid for and they're wasting away in your ATS?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Well, Jovio also re-engages them. Want to learn more about Jovio? Cool. Just go to jovio.com. That's J O V E O dot com. It's showtime.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Oh, I love chicken cock. I do. I love it.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  And, and we don't hear that enough. So I had to play it right as a transition.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Lightens the mood.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Oh, and we're gonna need. At the end of this one, we need a shot of it.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Gonna need a lighter mood. First and foremost, where are you guys at? You are, are you, Mo, are you back? Are you on the island?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I'm back. I'm back.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Back in Seattle?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  We're done. We're done. We're done with the island. No more Gilligan's Islands. Yep. Yeah. Back in, back in the big city, back in the big city and getting ready for the school year. So yeah, summer.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Well, that was an experiment. That was an experiment. And, and

• 4:21Speaker 01

  It was.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Are you in the, in the cabin, JT?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  I am in the cabin, eking out what I can for golfing before the travel season hits and

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Reality sets in, but yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  That's, that's gonna hit us soon. That's gonna hit us soon. Well, let's go ahead and

• 4:36Speaker 01

  You're in a bar.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  It looks like you're in a bar.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Very good point. I'm in a bar. So if you hear, you know, talking, you hear yelling, you hear kids running around. Yes, I'm in Europe and that's, you know, I'm in a bar. So that's, that's

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Good to be.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  It's all good. It's all good.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Killing it.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  But let's go ahead. Let's, let's jump into shout outs and shout outs are brought to you by those lovely, lovely, the Chad and Cheese t-shirts. They're soft, they're stylish, and they are free, all because those crazy kids over at Aaron App, you know, the employee referral software for modern hiring teams. You are a modern hiring team, aren't you? Well, they knew you needed a cool and comfortable t-shirt and you can get one for free. I said it free, but not unless you register at Chadcheese.com/free. And check out Aaron App at AaronApp.com.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Is it time for shout outs?

• 5:33Speaker 00

  You know it is. You know it is. Mo, what you got?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  I can't not shout out Dolly Parton. I mean,

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  May she rest in peace. What an icon, a complete legend. I can't stop marveling at how the entire world seemed to stop for a moment and despite all of our division, just mourn this one person. Like, if you can stop the world and make everyone grieve for you, you did a great job on this planet. And she just, she made the world a better place. She actually, like, instead of becoming a billionaire or trillionaire, right? She probably couldn't have gone to trillionaire, but instead of becoming a billionaire, Dolly Parton decided to give so much of her wealth away to ensure that kids could read.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  What if we could inspire other billionaires to be that good hearted? Wouldn't the world be a better place? Like, she, she was one of a kind. And I just, I have so much deep and abiding respect for her. And I think she was incredible. And I am so grateful that I made this trip to Austin in 2017, when I was like eight months pregnant with my daughter, to go see her in concert, because that was the one and only time I got to see her. And yeah, she was, she was a legend. I mean, I have like several Dolly Parton books in my home, including this one in my hand. And I just, I, she, she was amazing. She was absolutely amazing. And Grim Reaper, dude, there were other people to choose. Really?

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  You had to take her. Like, there were a few other choices you could have made.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Same age bracket, too. Come on, man. So anyway, shout out to Dolly. She was the freaking best.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  A national treasure.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Truly.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Born

• 7:09Speaker 02

  A legend.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  In Tennessee, died in Tennessee. Just an amazing, an amazing one, an amazing one. Yeah. So, ah, RIP to, RIP to Dolly. I'd be, mine's a little bit more dystopian.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  So my shout out goes to the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. So if you've been online this week and you haven't seen videos of robots running the 100 meter dash faster than Usain Bolt, or a, I don't know, robot roundhouse kicking another one, robots weightlifting and tons of other sports like table tennis, high jump, soccer, relay racing. There were like literally 30 purely competitive events just around sports. Um, did you guys see this?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  I saw the highlights. Crazy.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Okay. It looks like, looks like robots are in our algorithm, JT. Mo's gonna have to.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I got Dolly all day. That's all I had. I was just like crying, Dolly. Oh my gosh, everything. Tears and tears.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Well, the total robots who participated were over 2,000 and that's a 311% increase over last year. 311%. That's what I call a beautiful disaster. Get it? 311? Anyway, there were also 21 scenario-based operational tasks in the competition. They had industrial assembly, material loading and handling, supermarket restocking, medicine sorting, you know, like in your local pharmacy, housekeeping and cleaning, bed making, clothes folding, firefighting operations, no shit.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Fighting.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Emergency incident handling, search and rescue, and many more, right? So this competition isn't just about sports. It's about tasks and it's about jobs. Plus, Business Insider is reporting that former Uber drivers are now servicing Waymo cars. They're not driving. And Amazon, and Amazon is developing an internal initiative to build quote unquote fully automated delivery stations. You know, robots for the last mile stuff like sorting, loading and staging. So shout out to all those robots out there. We're, we're gonna be in utopia soon. We're not gonna have to do anything.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I don't like those.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, do you remember the show Battle Box? It's probably still on.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  When people make the homie. Like, it just makes that look so basic.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  It does. It really does.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Who watches that show anymore?

• 9:50Speaker 00

  So it was, it was, it's fun because you see the, okay, so the, the hundred meter dash. Some of those robots were going so fast and they can't stop that they're going so fast. So they literally have like a wall, like it's a padded wall and they all run into the padded wall. And it's fun to watch how fast they're going, but it's even more fun when they hit that wall. And some of them like do backflips and then you see sparks coming out and some going on fire. I mean,

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I might enjoy this.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Is amazing. It's amazing.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Sounds cathartic.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  It is, it is.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  What the world needs now.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Until they take over.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, until they take over.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, for, for, for the robot overlords, not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  We love you.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Yes. JT, what you got?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  So mine's pretty dark. If, so you know, I'm a golfer and ironically, yeah, I just,

• 10:44Speaker 01

  a trend.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  This year I got a new set of Callaway clubs. So shame on Good Good Golf and Callaway. If you didn't see it this week, Good Good Golf is a bro brand. They started out in social media, started building out apparel and, and starting doing co-branding opportunities. They did one with Callaway and this week, one of the bros, one of the founding bros thought that the, the advertisement, a great idea for an advertisement would be for him. A girl is checking out the new driver, the new Callaway driver in his bag. He promptly walks over, pushes her to the ground, stands over and says, don't touch my driver. It was quickly taken down, but damage is done. It's everywhere. Go check it out.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  What was more disturbing was Good Good Golf's awful initial reaction to what they had done. Like they had to backpedal later on. Callaway's was like, we don't condone it. Also not very strong, but at least better than Good Good Golf's initial reaction. And now it's just blowing up from there. But I mean, it's, we, you've seen it. It's disturbing. It is a disturbing video to watch and it's just a shame, right? Like it makes me go, ugh, about my clubs and how it was reacted. It's like, I don't know. It was bad. And, um, you know, the runner up to that is Target. Target's probably like, woo, thanks, Good Good Golf, because we had a huge mess up this week. But Good Good Golf's worse. It's like Targets like, look over there. Don't look, you know,

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Target with their, their Halloween costume. Like again, I don't know what's going on this week, but yikes. And shame on Good Good Golf.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Who are these people in charge? How are these decisions getting made? How, how are they going from incubation to execution? Greenlit? I, I do not understand who these morons are.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Like everybody's like, yo, that's a good idea. Cause he's running the show. I don't know. Do you know, clearly where was the voice of reason in the room to go, that might not fly?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. Even if women were in the room, for example, at Good Good and Callaway, like they certainly were stampeded on, like not listened to whatsoever. It's just, it's disgusting. It's, and the minimizing of it is what's really upsetting to me. For people to be like, oh, you're being too sensitive. No. Are you freaking kidding me?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  She's like pushed to the ground.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Unreal, unreal.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  The thing for me is as a man in the room who plays golf, okay? I also played, you know, football in high school and I play physical sports. Golf is not a physical sport. The thing that really is pissing me off about this whole manosphere thing is they're trying to make everything testosterone. Everything is manly. It's so, it's so much, and to me, this just shows that you're just a weak little asshole to be able to do something like that. But first and foremost, you're hip checking a woman in her back, in her back. I mean, if she saw it coming, like elbow you in your face and you got a bloody nose, that'd be more fucking funny than that was. But yeah, at the end of the day, I, watching this shit as a dude, I was in the military.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  I taught mixed martial arts in the military. I mean, just all the little things that you just do. That doesn't have to be who you are. You don't have to be this testosterone piece of shit like these guys are.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Not when we now make up 28% of the golfing market, women and growing, right? With plenty of purchasing power, plenty of purchasing power. So.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Huge growth market for them. And I bet from Callaway standpoint, I mean, the, the Good Good Golf guys are probably, because they're a bro, they, they don't care about that. But Callaway, you know, fucking Callaway guys. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Callaway.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Really bad look.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  I would kick Good Good Golf in the nuts and to the curb.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  And to the curb.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  You and me both. I love it.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Fucking idiots. Okay.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Cancel these losers.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Where we going, boys? Crazy travel sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. If you're looking to fuse AI into your tech stack and who is not? I mean, everybody is. Everybody wants that ROI with AI. Everybody wants ROI with AI. You can go to shaker.com because they have 75 years in the business, even before AI was AI. Or at least we know it today. Uh, they were in business. So check them out, shaker.com. Seriously. There's so much fucking noise that's out there today with all this technology in our space and all the different spaces. It's hard to navigate. So you need somebody to be able to help you. Go ahead and find, uh, shaker.com and tell them Chad and Cheese sent you.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  We are going to Rec Fest in Nashville. All three of us, we're going to be there. We're only missing Joel. He took the day off. Uh, this is happening September 23rd and 24th. Joel and I are going to be emceeing the disrupt stage on day one. You're both going to be on the innovate stage, right?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, baby.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Day one. So stop by and if you haven't got your tickets, go get your damn tickets. I don't know what you're, I don't know what you're waiting for. But on the first night of Rec Fest, uh, you can also come on over and see the four of us. Cause we're all going to be at Old Red's Rooftop Bar, uh, where you can have a drink with Chad, Cheese, JT, Mo. And, uh, it's, it's a different venue than last year. It's actually bigger, better, awesome event space. Then I'm going to be, are you guys going to do anything in, in Nashville? Anything fun? Do you all sightseeing?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  There's nothing to do there, you know? They don't have good music, they're cool bars, no good food.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  I need people watching alone. I mean, come on.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  If you, if you have not, and it doesn't sound like you have, you should try to get into the Nash Trash Bus Tour. It is fucking hilarious. You've got these two older ladies with hair to Jesus. And you go on this pink bus and they're, they're comedians and they take you on a tour in the bus. And they tell you about all the places and they have all the little funny bits and whatnot. It is fucking amazing. Nash Trash, you two should definitely be on it.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  We should have a Chad and Cheese Bus Tour next year. Let's do it.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  We could do, we could try to do Nash Trash because.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Right. And the bicycle tours. Like the pedal bikes?

• 16:51Speaker 00

  You know.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  We could, we could do a pedal bike.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. I do like that. I do like that. Okay. Too many options, too many options. After that, I'm heading to Cabo. I'm the best man over for Chris Long and the lovely Maren, uh, Maren Hogan. They're going to tie the knot. I'm so excited. Julian I's first time to Cabo. So we're pretty excited. Have you guys been to Cabo?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yes, I love it.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  You? Okay. Anything, anything you want to tell me? Anything I should do, should not do?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I mean, eat everything in sight. That's what you should do. That's what you should do.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Well, since I can't get good Mexican in Portugal, I am definitely going to do that. Right after that, almost forgot about that. You can't forget about Collaboration X. Shit, that's in the Omni in Dallas. September 29th through the first. I'm going to be there actually, um, as a judge for Shark Tank, doing some other kind of hosting duties. So that should be a blast. First time at an SIA event. Can't wait. Then on October 6th, we have the E Recruitment Congress coming up in Amsterdam at the Music Bao, which is fucking amazing, where Leven and the House of HR Crew will actually have, listen to this kids,

• 18:03Speaker 00

  humanoid robots working the show. I shit you not. They're going, yes.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Oh, Leven.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  It's going to be a blast. It's going to be a blast. Mo's like, I don't know if I can handle it.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Anyway, I love this show. We, this is like our fourth year of going. And then last but never least, Workday's frontline hiring event. This is the first time and only time I'm going to Vegas this year. It's on October 12th. I'm only doing this for Paradox. I'm only doing this for Workday. I hate going to Vegas. But we're doing it this year.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Balling on the sword.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  For any, for any of these events, go ahead and go to chadcheese.com/events. Uh, that's chadcheese.com/events and get your tickets. What are you waiting for? And one quick mention, if you haven't registered to play fantasy football with the Chad and Cheese, powered by our friends at Factory Fix, head over to chadcheese.net/fantasy-football. There's only 10 teams open, so register now, cross your fingers and let's begin. I love NFL football. I know JT, you want to play, right?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Sure. I'll definitely do it.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Okay, okay. I, you want in, we're good.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  You know.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  We want in, you want in.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  I love random picking. I love, I told you this story in high school.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  I love random picking.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  No, true story. In high school, this guy was running a fantasy football where you just had to pick the winning team every week, right? And he wanted more money. So he comes over and he says, do you want in? Like it's X dollars. And I'm like, what do you got to do? And he's like, well, you got to pick who wins. And I'm like, great. I sat down. I go, what color are their shirts? What color are their shirts? What color are their shirts? And I picked the entire thing by colors of shirts and won. He was so pissed at me. He gave me the money, would never let me play again.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  That's what, you're in. You are in because that's exactly what I want to see this year.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  That's about as accurate as you know in the stats. You know what I mean?

• 19:55Speaker 00

  It is what it is, right? Not to mention you can always use AI.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  A win is a win, man. A win is a win.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Top it. That's right.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Whoo, this is what we're calling our AI block, kids. Imagine that, talking about AI on the Chad and Cheese Podcast. A report from Gallup and Bentley University says, quote, "Americans familiarity with AI has grown over the past two years. Today, 70%, 7-0% say they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, but highlights from Business and Society reports say they don't trust businesses to use AI responsibly." Go figure. Nearly 80%. Listen to this, nearly 80% in that 18 to 29 age range, they don't trust businesses with AI.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  70% from 30 to 59, 30 to 59, they don't trust businesses, and 75% for those over 60s. On the employee experience side, Jim Harder from Gallup writes, "Organizations are investing heavily in AI adoption to improve employee productivity and efficiency, but Gallup's latest findings suggest that access alone does not improve or weaken the employee experience." It's totally flatlined. And last but not least, news that Twins, or Twin One, AI has emerged

• 21:28Speaker 00

  from stealth with 20 million in seed funding. 20 million emerging from self. I probably because they have AI in their title. Anyway, it's AI, it's AI-powered digital twins. It's a platform for professional knowledge workers. Twin One is developing digital AI twins designed to represent an individual's professional knowledge, judgment, and context. I mean, what could go wrong, right, JT? JT, what could go wrong with that?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, a little scary, a little scary. Look, I mean, we know this is coming and we all, in our little private WhatsApp chat, we're always talking about like guardrails, guardrails. We need more guardrails, you know, more, more checking in and what's being done here. I mean, but then we know what's about to happen, right? Like the, the bad actors are going to come out and it's going to crash and burn and be super public. And it's unfortunate, but it's going to take some pretty bad crashing and burning, you know, for us to start to, everyone to start to pay attention. You know, we got lawsuits coming out left and right in our space, but it still doesn't seem to be enough to make people take notice. So my question to all of you is like, what's it gonna be? Like, how bad is it gonna have

• 22:46Speaker 02

  to be that the, you know, that moment that makes everybody go, okay, I guess we should pay attention now. I don't know, pretty scary.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Zuckerberg and Meta just got hit. Literally, I saw on the feed right before, it's like $16 billion for, for, yeah, buh buh buh billion for, for social media. So you're right. I mean, this is gonna, this is, is slowly coming home to roost for the social media platforms. The question is, can they catch up to AI faster? What are your thoughts, Mo?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I mean, when it comes down to the whole digital twin thing from the first point, first story, I'm just, I'm so blown away by it because like we all see what they're doing, right? And I would say over my dead body, but I think that that's kind of what they want. You know, it's like they want us to train all these machines and then push us out of the way. And it's just, it's utterly terrifying though. And we all, we all see it coming. But with regard to the concept of like, when is enough enough? I don't know, Expedia just did layoffs and they laid off like SVPs and VPs. And I'm like, maybe once it starts inching towards the top and AI displacement, right? Like maybe once the executives start to get a little heat under the collar about like their potential replacement, maybe

• 24:02Speaker 01

  that's when suddenly there will be a shift away from an AI-first policy. That might be what it takes, right? When the people at the top start feeling it.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  And when there's no job paying high, high six figures or seven figures that they can go to next, right? Like, because when they start getting hurt in the pocketbook, maybe now they'll pay attention.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  That's when they care. Exactly. So it's gotta hit them in the wallet or they're not going to give a damn. And that's just how it is. And I don't know, I don't know who they think is going to be buying products and services over the course of time as we continue to boot people from the workforce and pretend that there are jobs when there are none, and fake these unemployment numbers and, you know, lie about figures. It's just like, this is all just such an elaborate scheme, you know, like, but we all see it and it's infuriating. It's absolutely infuriating to see what's going on.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  I agree. So beside the fact that companies are saying they are having layoffs due to AI, which in most cases is total bullshit, I believe, I believe a big problem we don't talk about is that AI in business has a narrative problem, a story problem. And think about it. Who is telling the story? Because the biggest voices like Altman, Musk, Zuckerberg, they've totally shit the bed saying that it's going to take all your jobs. And then in the next interview, oh, well, wait a minute, it's gonna create jobs too. And I think the biggest problem is that shareholders and investors have allowed a bunch of dudes with

• 25:30Speaker 00

  God complexes to have the ability to get on a microphone, meaning they can have a national or and/or global stage whenever they want it to talk about subjects they have literally no experience with. So anyways, after months and at this point, years of contradictory statements flying out of the idiot CEO mouths and them fighting back and forth like six year olds on the fucking playground, the, over the public airwaves at that, are we really surprised that the public doesn't trust AI? I mean, let's be clear, the public doesn't trust these assholes, right? They know they're the ones running the AI company.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  So AI doesn't just have a narrative and story problem. No, it's, it's a delivery mechanism. It's a problem a bunch of inept storytellers are at the helm of these companies. And at this point, Altman, Musk, and Zuckerberg are just overpaid versions of Mo Larry Curly. Then, last but not least, you start seeing companies pop up that say, no recruiters needed. Where are your AI sales force? Or the Twin One story where they are developing digital AI twins designed to quote unquote, "represent an individual's professional knowledge, judgment, and working context." I mean, can you imagine why?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Let's see how that goes.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Why are employees discouraged? Why are they disengaged? Would you be engaged if you thought that they were trying to actively replace you?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but also, I mean, so you know how we talk about art imitating life? We have so many movies that have, have shown you what goes horribly wrong when, when the box take over, right? I mean, how many times are you gonna use it? Shall we play a game on here? So the point there is that I just think more people are catching up to what AI is. I mean, I still, a year ago, I would say less than half the population even understood it. So did they care? No. But now that, again, as it gets more mainstream, more people understand what it does, it's very easy to associate it with the art that we've seen, which is this could go horribly, terribly wrong. And now there's stories to back it up. You know, the leaks and things like the stuff, the bad stuff's been going on. It's just, it didn't make sense to people. Now it does.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Right. It was almost like the sci-fi stuff was working against us initially because it sounded so far-fetched. But now that we have real world applications and horror stories emerging, people are starting to, I agree, wake up to the fact that it is in fact occurring. Good times, good times.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Robots. You think a robot can replace me?

• 28:08Speaker 00

  We'll be right back.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Hey, boys and girls, it's Joel Cheeseman here from the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Guys, I've seen pretty much every AI recruiting tool out there. I give my time and money to a very small few, and I'm here to tell you that I'm an investor in Alex AI because this tech actually delivers. Look, if you're still drowning in automated resume slop, ghosting candidates, and wasting hours on first round screens, it's time to hire with Alex. Alex is the AI recruiter that's actually solid, which means it doesn't sound like a robot from a 1984 sci-fi flick.

• 28:42Speaker 06

  Shall we play a game?

• 28:44Speaker 05

  Alex interviews candidates on video or phone, asks smart follow-ups, takes killer notes, and surfaces the best ones so your team can focus on hiring top talent instead of chasing ghosts. If you're scaling a team and tired of the same old pain, go check out Alex right now at alex.com. That's A-L-E-X.com. And tell them Joel sent you. And right now, you can get a free copy of the book by Alex founder Aaron Wang titled The 10x Recruiter. Just go to alex.com/chese. That's A-L-E-X.com/C-H-E-E-S-E. That's right, a free book on the principles of AI and talent acquisition. And all you need to do is head to alex.com/chese

• 29:27Speaker 05

  right now. Guys, alex.com. Interview everyone. Hire the best.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  All right, kids, this block is sponsored by Free Whiskey. You can't, you cannot beat.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  You can't beat that.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  You can try, but I don't, I don't know how. I don't know how. The only way you can get free whiskey is go to Chad cheese.com/free. Thanks to our friends over at Provenbase. That's right, provenbase.com, who is helping recruiting and sourcing teams uncover and engage specialized hard to find talent across thousands of sources, not just a couple of sources, thousands of sources. On to the next piece of news. You're gonna love this. Recruit Holdings. You've heard of these guys? You've heard of these guys, right?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  A time or two.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  A time or two.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  I don't know how we have to always talk about these assholes and indeed, anyway, um, it's not often in the staffing space that we have a raid on an alleged cartel. Yes, a fucking cartel. So apparently, so apparently Japan Fair Trade Commission are investigating Indeed's parent company, Recruit Holdings, for a cartel activity in a connection with suspected violations of Japan's Anti-Monopoly Act, which is what we call antitrust here in America. Reports suggest executives, shit, from five companies, including recruits, recruit staffing, and staff service, that's two of Recruit's companies, alongside with competitors, Parasol Temp Staff, Adecco, and Manpower, two other very big companies, allegedly, allegedly, agreed around November of 2022 to raise dispatch fees charged to clients by about 100 yen per hour, that's 63 cents USD, which allegedly started April 2023 across clerical positions nationwide.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  That's a lot of, a lot of clerical positions. Now, now that across the board raise might have not been looked, you know, too bad upon if the raise was passed down to workers, but guess what? The core narrative in the Japanese press was that while the fees increased to corporate clients under the guise of general wage inflation, the money allegedly went toward padding agency profits rather than reaching the people being, listen to this number, about 1.5 million workers. Imagine how many hours 1.5 million workers worked over those years. Apparently, this whole thing caught fire and sparked significant, uh, public backlash in Japan.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Media outlets, uh, accuse the staffing ABCs of piggybacking or free riding on the government's national push for higher wages. So the government was saying, look, you need to pay these people more. And they're like, yes, we're going to. And they started skipping money. Anyway, in Japan, cartel violations can trigger administrative surcharge payment, uh, orders with base rates around 10% of relevant sales during the violation period as well as potential criminal referrals. Now, last week, I said Indeed should sponsor Spaceballs 2, the movie, the sequel. And, and, and this, and this week, I'm starting to think that Recruit should sponsor a Japanese version of Orange is the New Black.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  What do you think, Mo?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  There we go. There we go. I mean, it sounds like it. It sounds like it. I mean, I just, can, can companies get any more evil? Like, like, where's the bar? It's just, come on. I mean, everything Dolly wrote in nine to five is true, right? Like, they're just

• 33:26Speaker 00

  It's worse.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Taking everything. It's, yeah, it's definitely worse. She should do a sequel. Oh, man, she can't. So sad. She was one of a kind. But yeah, allegedly, allegedly. Yeah, it's just the bar keeps on getting lowered. It's a damn shame.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  It's a damn shame, JT.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  I just think it's interesting. Like, you said it was 2022 is when this went down?

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's when they agreed and it didn't start until April of 2023. That's what was alleged.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Still, I mean, the fact that they got away with it for three years before getting caught, right? I mean, it's, it's incredible. You run those numbers. Uh, I just, it's, the, the problem is like, for every one that you catch, there's a hundred that are caught, you know, that are flying under the radar that are doing that. There's plenty of companies out there right now, especially in staffing, that are like, we're not, like, think all the staffing firms right now that are tanking because they have no contracts. And if they don't have an alternative source of income, right? So I look, for example, Ronstadt, um, has RiseSmart, Adecco has Lee Hect Harrison. So they figured out parts of their business where the outplacement, all the people getting laid off will make money off of that way because we don't have the contracts. You're talking about so many other small to medium sized players who have not built that outplacement.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  By the way, contact me. Um, and so, uh, they don't have that revenue stream. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna go do tactics like that as a way to start to make up on the margin. And I guarantee if we looked under the hood, there's way more than them that are doing that right now.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  I'm sure, but let's get the big ones first. And as I said, as I said earlier, imagine how many hours 1.5 million people worked over those years? Well, I imagined and I calculated for a one year, 1.5 million workers part time equals around 2 billion hours at 63 cents, at 63 cents USD, that's 1.2 buh buh billion dollars per year. Let's talk about full time. Let's talk about full time. Uh, that equals about 2.7 billion hours. Okay. That's 63 cents per hour. That's about 1.7 buh buh billion dollars USD. So just let that sink in. One year and a group of five staffing agencies, Recruit being the largest in Japan, are basically skimming billions off the top, allegedly.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Uh, and I got, and I gotta say, last but not least, huge thanks to Julie, my wife, uh, the job board doctor so washed for digging in, digging in and performing the forensic work on this. Uh, if, if you want any more, just go to jobboarddoctor.com, spell it out, jobboarddoctor.com. She literally gets into the weeds on this shit. It's amazing, some of the shit that she does, to be quite frank. Uh, and how she brained me, I have no clue.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Oh, you took, you took the words right out of her mouth. You beat us to it, Jen.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Gotcha. Uh, and we go from one to another. It's Amazon, kids. Anyway, Amazon has several internal reports that show how AI is causing the company to overspend on various proj- projects. The biggest blunder so far is that they spent 1.8 million dollars, uh, in a failed Claude Sonnet AI deployment, which was supposed to match author details with listings on Amazon. Seems pretty basic, right?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That seems pretty easy.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  Representing.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Even a robot could do it.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  You would think. Apparently Claude Sonnet was having problems. Anyway, that represents, that represents 860% increase over the allocated budget that was only detected some five months after the, it just started. Five months?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Five months. Okay. So I was wondering how Anthropic's revenues were jumping so quickly, JT? Uh, is this a bug or a feature?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Very good question.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  100% a feature, right? It's only as good as you program it. Oh, well, you know, operator error, learning curve. We've all had our learning curves on Anthropic. As somebody who codes on Claude all the time, for example, I, I mean, I have had projects where I'm 30 hours in and I realize I've built something that's broken, right? And so, and that's, those are the ones I've caught. So gosh knows, you know, they were laughing all the way to the bank on that one.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Seriously. Do you think any of these employees are like pro, like actually programming these things incorrectly on purpose? I wonder, because it's like, hey, they think they're trying to replace them, you know? Like, maybe they're just like, hey, let me go ahead and send down this rabbit hole that I know is not going to actually work and cost my company a shitload of money. I don't know, maybe. And they're like, the AI is not good. Is that what's happening? I don't know. Or is the tech that bad? Not sure. But yeah, it could be a feature. Like, let's get people hooked on this shit, even if it doesn't work. Make all the money, laugh all the way to the bank.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, first off. Quickly. You have to remember that these companies, and I blame these companies first off because they played the whole token maxing game. And they're like, oh, we can do this so quickly. And we can find better ways so much quicker and so on and so forth. Instead of actually doing the hard work of sitting down with their staff and looking at different ways they could prospectively restructure processes and jobs and tasks and all of these things, right? They didn't do that. They're like, let's just feed it all into AI. We're gonna max out our tokens. And next thing you know, they're like, oh shit, that's a lot of money.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Oh shit, that's a lot of money, right?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yep. The wild west. I mean, the wild west is what like, what they asked for, and that's what they got.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Exactly what they got. But I mean, this, this feels like token maxing due to slacking. Like, people weren't even paying attention. And I can't imagine, I can't imagine that an employee would, or a team of employees, would allow a budget to go over 1.8 million dollars. Um, I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Somebody could have left. They could have actually set it up, set the project up, said, fuck off, Amazon. They could, they could have hit the door, right?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Be kind of legendary.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Hit the door. And the next thing you know, 1.8 million dollars. But to be fair, that's reportedly the, well, it's not the only Amazon projects that's, that's blown through its budget. But still, but still, let's not, let's, let's put this into perspective, like you're talking about, Mo. Amazon's latest quarterly revenue sits at more than 181 billion dollars, meaning 1.8 million is only 0.1%. So is this something that they're gonna give a shit about? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's gonna be, are they gonna write it off on tax? I mean, I don't know how this shit works. That's more money than I'm gonna fuck around with, right?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Well, we all thought we had to like, you know, be good stewards at our corporate jobs and like, you know, dot, dot our i's and cross our t's and all that stuff. And it turns out you could just go like, below 1.8 million. I mean, who knows? Maybe those people are gone. But I, I doubt it if it took five months to uncover this blunder, right? It's just, wow. Wow.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  We'll be right back.

• 41:16Speaker 00

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• 42:01Speaker 00

  game? Head over to veritone.com/hire and see what all the buzz is about. That's veritone.com/hire. Soosh out. Boy, that escalated quickly. All right. Something we talk about on the show every now and again, tips. So the BBC Yeah. put out an article this week called, What You See Is What You Pay. Why Some U.S. Restaurants Are Banning Tips. That's right. U.S. Right. In America, where we are the tip culture, right? We are, they're looking at banning tips. All of us on this pod, being America, we've lived

• 42:43Speaker 00

  this topic, right? And we've talked about tips on this show several times, but never companies banning tips in the U, in the U.S. Where tips are embedded in our culture. Uh, the story cites that across the U.S., a growing number of restaurants are banning tips altogether, uh, raising menu prices to pay staff fixed hourly wages up to $40 an hour. Proponents argue it eliminates income inequality, which I appreciate, and wage bias also get that by convincing customers, uh, to accept higher menu prices is, is a little bit harder, a little bit harder.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Now, one of these companies has been doing this for about five years, just right after COVID. So, uh, it's obviously working for them. Rachel Miller, chef and owner of Nightshade Noodle Bar, I like the name of that, Nightshade Noodle Bar, in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, you should check them out, uh, JT, says, "The people breaking their backs and minds in the kitchen were taking home a fraction of what servers made on tips from the same hours. Our prices are higher than comparable restaurants because they carry the full cost of paying people properly." So, could the American tipping culture finally be facing its breakpoint? Mo, what do you think?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I've always been annoyed by the fact that they have, as an institution, I mean, all the institutions are pushing the responsibilities onto the average, everyday person. And so I've always found it annoying that companies, restaurants specifically, would ask the, the patrons of the restaurant, restaurants to actually go and make up for the difference in pay that they should be paying their employees and giving them health insurance and all that stuff. And I've seen in Seattle where I live, like, a lot of restaurants that are actually coming to the table with this. Like, we give our restaurant workers, uh, health insurance, and we give them medical, you know, all that stuff. We give them fair pay, et cetera. And they add in that tip automatically. And I always am happy to see it. I think that a lot of people, they don't think about that when they're

• 44:54Speaker 01

  going up to pay at the register. They don't think about what they would have put in as a tip. And so it's a, it's a leap. Like, why is this so expensive? Well, it's expensive because of XYZ. But I think you can, like, untrain that out of people. And I think that that, that is something that I would love to see more of. I love that article because it highlighted this woman who said, you know, I really don't like the people who are expected to make up the difference for these people's paychecks, that these patrons are going to be able to make these, like, sort of biased gut check deals, a part of these rights. Because, you know, maybe you don't like the person who served you because of some, like, really horrible reason, right? Like, people are biased and awful. And so there's discriminate. Exactly. They still did their job exactly the

• 45:36Speaker 01

  same way, but people reward others differently. And so you're leaving it up to a very biased populace to make, uh, make someone's paycheck. And I don't like that at all. So I'm, I'm all about, uh, increasing equity and in that regard. So I really do like that. But I don't know, the tipping culture has gotten a little bit out of hand in the United States for sure as well, uh, when it comes to like, well, how much are you supposed to tip? Like, I, sometimes you come up and it's like, 20, 25, 30 is the options. And you're like, I don't want to be the cheap a-hole who like, does 20. But 20 is like, supposed to be for exceptional. They just handed me something, you know? It's like, exactly, shaming. And I'm always, I'm always like, dude, I can't be that person.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  It's like going to Starbucks, and then I ask you, want you want a tip? You're like, you gotta go to custom first, and then you gotta go to no tip.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Right. I know. And then you're like, oh, this is so awkward. And then you take, you hold up the line and you're stressed. You're like, math, ah, right now, you know? So if people could take that, people could take that off my plate and just bake it into the prices, I'm all for it. And it makes the restaurant workers happier and have like, that sense of calm, knowing what they will earn, instead of having this question as to like, how much will you take home? And again, also, the back of the staff house getting like, what they deserve is huge. Uh, and by the way, I was in line, uh, recently at a, a local establishment behind a literal billionaire. And guess what? I tipped the same percentage as he did. So there's that.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Sounds like, uh, I don't know, like taxes. Okay, go ahead.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, I have so much to say on this, right? As somebody who's worked. So one of the things that we've seen post pandemic is that in a bad economy like what we have now, where people try to save money is on the tipping. So we are starting to see more people not tip because their bill was so high. They're like, I can't afford that. So a lot of servers are saying they're not making nearly the money that they were making before. Okay. I think the argument about the back of the house is working just as hard, and the front of the house is making money is a fair argument. I know of one place that I frequent where it is a flat 25% that is automatically put on, and you are made aware of it, you do not tip, and what they get is the best

• 47:45Speaker 02

  of the best in servers, because all the servers know that the more they can upsell and the better job they can do, the bigger the bill, 25% on a bigger bill, right? So that mentality is there, and everyone's happy in that environment, right? Everyone knows they're getting tipped well, they're getting great service, and they get the best of the best. So I think that model's very interesting. But I want to tell you something, and I'm mad that I don't remember the town it's in. It went viral. A bunch of servers told me about this. The automatic thing you were talking about, right? Like, it used to be 15, 20, 25. Now, a lot of us see 20, 25, 30. There was a bar, a bar, where majority of it's drinks. They knew people weren't looking at it, and they looked at the trend, and everybody was hitting the first one to give the lowest tip. Do you know

• 48:28Speaker 02

  what they did? They went 100%, 50, 25, and all the drunk people were hitting the low one, and getting 100%. And they blew up, and people don't know any better. By then, they're gone. You can't go back and ask for your tip money back. And that's how they fixed that problem. So, I mean, that's when they're getting inventive, when stuff happens like this. So yeah, tip culture's getting a little crazy in the U.S., but I think there's gotta be a better way to handle this. And, you know, we'll see.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  I, I'm, I'm seeing, uh, the same thing happening in parts of London. And it really pissed me off because I go to a brunch place, and I, not, not a cheap brunch place, in around Redmond Park. And I know it's kind of like, really nice area, but it, it's an expensive place to have brunch. And then they're automatically adding the tip to your bill. And you're like, just pay your fucking people and get it over with. Can we just make it simple? I, I don't want to do math. I don't want to play the game. I don't want to have to choose. I just want to come in here as a customer and have an experience, right? And so when we talk about the actual business side of

• 49:40Speaker 00

  the house, so why do you think staffing restaurant positions are almost always considered high turnover? It's because they make so little money and the tips are inconsistent, that a dollar more per hour across the street is a big enough incentive to leave. Not just servers, cooks, bussers, the whole damn staff, right? So this isn't just about fairness and equality and transparency. It's about smart business people who don't want to spend a good amount of their time filling high churn positions. Yes. And you find great people, you pay them well, and they stay.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  What a concept.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Can we just, can we just do that? You know what else we can do? And you're gonna love this.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Oh, here we go.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so why did the restaurant ban tipping? Why did the restaurant ban tipping?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Got nothing. Not enough.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Because it only made sense.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Ah, there we go. I was like, something about a cow. I don't know.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Mo, that's another one in the can, and we out.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  We out, we out.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Thank you for listening to, what's it called? A podcast. The Chad, the cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet, you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play,

• 51:38Speaker 00

  or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. So weird. We out.