Category Archives: Benefits

Employees, Smoking = Less Money

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Smokers will hate to hear this, but if you smoke, you’re more likely to make less money.

Really?

Really.

From CNBC —

“In a new paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta economists Julie Hotchkiss and Melinda Pitts found that smokers only earn about 80 percent of what nonsmokers earn. People who used to smoke and quit more than a year earlier, though, earn 7 percent more than people who never lit up in the first place.

The PSA advice that “one cigarette is one too many” apparently is true at work. Hotchkiss and Pitts found that the earnings of both a weekend social smoker and a pack-a-day puffer suffer a similar wage gap.

“It is simply the fact that someone smokes that matters in the labor market, not the level of intensity,” they wrote. “Even one cigarette per day is enough to trigger the smoking wage gap.”

That truly sucks, because those of you who know me, know I love hanging out with smokers!  Smokers are the backbone of your informal office communication network.  Smokers come in all shapes and sizes, from all levels of your organization.  It’s nothing on any given day to see a senior executive and some rank and file employee, standing outside enjoying a smoke and some small talk.  Many times strong relationships are formed outside in the ‘smokers area’, and it is very common for information to be shared that normally wouldn’t be amongst employees of different ranks.  I don’t smoke – but I love going out and hanging with smokers!

So, as you can imagine, this news from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (and why does Atlanta have their own Federal Reserve?!) was extremely disheartening to me.  I wonder what else Julie and Melinda have been digging into down there in Atlanta?  Do employees who drink Gin make more than all other employees? (please let this be true!) What about the office slut? Does he/she make more money, at work?  If so, did they name that ‘the slut wage gap’?  Do our tax dollars support this ‘research’?

Here is what I know, compensation pro wannabes, if slice and dice the data enough, you can make up any conclusion you want to.  The reality is, smoking equates mostly to lower education, thus lower wages.  That’s a broad stroke, but fairly accurate.  Educated people, for the most part, understand that smoking is bad for you.  Having that knowledge, and being educated, tends then to lead to a non-smoking life.  Having lower education, and knowing smoking is bad for you, tends to lead to a life of ‘what the hell, I’m going to die anyway’.  Some educated folks fall into this same trap.

So, I’ll ask you my smoking friends – if you knew you could make more money, would you stop smoking?  Also, if you never smoked, are you willing to pick it up for a 7% bump in pay?!

Smoke’em if you’ve gotten them in the comments…

 

The Best Thing HR Can Ever Do For Employees

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By random circumstance I’ve had three of the most boring HRish types of conversations in the past month about 401K!  Can you imagine me talking about 401K?  It’s so, well, it just regular old HR talk!  One conversation was with our banking partner (Shoutout to PNC, 33 year business relationship with them and I value that greatly!), two others with trench HR peers, but all three conversations were about the exact same thing — Auto Enrolling employees into 401K.

This is actually a really polarizing topic in HR, I’ve found!  It comes down to two schools of thought:

1. HR Pros who believe auto enrolling is helping their employees

2. HR Pros who believe they are infringing on the privacy of their employees by auto enrolling their employees

I’m in camp #1!  In fact, I’ll go on record in saying that auto enrolling your employees into 401K is the single greatest gift you can give to your employees over their career with your company.  Bam!  I said it.

Let me give you a few facts about employees:

1. The majority of your employees that are under 30 have no idea they should be saving for retirement – when it’s the most important time to do so.

2. The majority of your employees at any age – don’t save enough for retirement.

3. The majority of your employees think a magical fairy will come along at age 65 and pay for them to live the next 25-30 years.

These are all actually true!

Most people don’t think about retirement and the amount of money it will take to retire until they get to be around 50.  At that point, it’s too late and they are then on a path to be a senior citizen greeter at Walmart.  HR can change all of this.  HR can ensure that when your employees get to be around retirement age, at least they might have some hope of sitting around enjoying not working!  It’s easy. It’s called Auto Enroll – check it out.

If it’s so good why aren’t all companies doing this?

It’s America, right?  We hate being forced to do anything.  What!? You mean your going to force me to sign up for 401K and save for my future! How dare you!  This isn’t Russia!

Want to take 401K Auto Enrollment one great step further!?  Auto Enroll your employees and have 3% taken out of their pay automatically as well.  Just auto enrolling really does nothing but making it easy for people to start saving, but you can actually auto enroll and start them out with an automatic deduction of your choosing. The employee at anytime can choose not to participate and stop the deduction, but very, very few ever will!

Can you imagine the difference you could make in your employees life by forcing helping them start saving for retirement?  For many of your employees, it would be the best thing HR ever did for them, period.

What Detroit’s Bankruptcy and Your Company Have In Common

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Big news last week was that the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  Made national headlines as being the largest municipality in the history of America to do so – yet, I think most people, nationally, are really not surprised.  For decades Detroit has had a horrible reputation as being the murder capital of the world, corrupt politicians, GM going under and the government rescuing it, and everything that is wrong with unions.  Besides a few shining moments from local professional sports teams, there are really never any positive national stories coming out of Detroit.   Fast Company believed Detroit was so far beyond repair, and they were probably right, that Detroit should be bulldozed and turned into farm land.  Basically, hit the reset button.

As you know, I’m a core problem kind of person.  I believe at the heart of most issues, there is a core problem that has created all the issues your are facing.  Most organizations, like Detroit and your own companies, don’t like solving the core problem – you like solving all the little symptoms that the core problem is/has created.  People catch the common cold and take cold medicine – yet study after study show that washing your hands is really the only thing that is going to keep you getting the cold, and those same studies show most people still don’t wash their hands often enough or long enough to not catch the cold.  We like solving symptoms!  It gives us little wins and makes us feel successful. Solving core problems takes a lot of work, usually takes unpopular difficult decisions and many times the success isn’t immediately seen.

So what is Detroit’s core problem?  That is really up for debate – but it’s core Detroit is a victim of its own success. The great Automotive Industry that gave so much to the City of Detroit ended up being its downfall.  Relying solely and completely on one industry bankrupted Detroit.  Everything else is a symptom of time and function.  Rely on one product, service, etc. long enough and eventually the life cycle of that product or service will catch up with you.  The city is just a victim of that life cycle. Here’s some facts from Morgan Housel at  The Motley Fool:

“But the largest driver of Detroit’s demise is a simple, startling fact: the city’s population declined 65% in the last six decades. No city can survive such an exodus; it’s actually amazing Detroit’s finances lasted this long.

The Motor City was home to 1.9 million people in 1950, at the time nearly identical in size to Los Angeles. Today, 700,000 inhabit Detroit, or less than a fifth the size of L.A. That works out to 2.2 people leaving Detroit every hour, 24 hours a day, for the last 63 years.

If the number of people who left Detroit in the last sixty years formed their own city, it would be the nation’s ninth largest, ahead of Dallas, Texas…

Detroit shows how organizations that can’t adapt eventually crumble. Before it was a technology hub, San Francisco relied on shipping, and before that, gold mining. Before New York was the financial capital of the world, it was the garment capital of the world…Detroit was overwhelmingly reliant on the auto industry. When the fate of three companies — General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford (NYSE: F), and Chrysler — turned, so went the entire city’s fate. Evan Soltas of Bloomberg wrote, “Detroit’s dependence on cars wasn’t exactly the problem. It was dependence itself. Cities should never go all in on any industry, cars or otherwise. It didn’t realize that until it was too late.”

Detroit can easily be your company.  Don’t kid yourself into thinking it can’t be – that is another major mistake generations of Detroit’s leaders made.  “We are different” “Everyone will always need cars.”  “Everyone will always need Facebook.” “Everyone will always need $125 running shoes.” Everyone will always need…you fill in the blank.  Diversification is the only thing that can truly mitigate your risk – and it’s one of those ‘core’ problems at almost every company.  It’s tough because we are told to ‘be the best at what you do’ and it’s hard being the best at many things and be diversified.  We can’t save Detroit – it needs to be reborn – but you can save your company – focus on core problems and stop solving symptoms.

 

Profiling Needy

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Last week I wrote a post about how money can buy happiness – and decided to do a ‘Pay-It-Forward’ exercise with my team – this is from that original post:

“Tomorrow morning I’m handing each one of my employees a $100 bill and asking them to go out into the world at some point their day and give it away – randomly – or not randomly – to someone other than themselves.  $100 isn’t a giant amount for my staff – but I’m sure it will have a big meaning to someone else – I think some of the people on my team will feel good about helping someone out – about surprising them and making their day/week/month.   My hope is they’ll come back with a smile and a story.  My hope is they’ll feel a little better about their day.  My hope is they’ll feel happy.  My hope is – money can buy happiness.”

So, this went down – a stack of $100 bills and we all went off to find who we thought needed that $100 the most.  First, I want to share some learning from this activity:

  • I gave very few rules – one was that they had to ‘give’ the money away that day, by midnight – almost everyone wished they had more time.
  • Apparently when you go to give out money – you do a lot of stalking! You want to make sure the receiver deserves it so you follow them around for like 10 minutes which tells you all you need to know about a person!
  • When given the chance to help – it’s hard to find someone to help! In any random day you see all kinds of people to help – someone hands you cash and says ‘Go Help’ and they all disappear…or do they!?  It seems when you actually have the resources to help – you do more ‘Profiling’ and become much more selective about who is actually needy! I say this with all positive intent – my team wanted to help out the ‘most’ deserving person – and you find out it’s hard to tell degrees of deserving apart!
  • In this exercise many on my team set very high expectations for the event of giving – reality is you probably don’t change someone’s life with $100 – but you surprise a lot of people!
  • Some people on the receiving end – are very cynical! (We actually had people say: “So, what do I have to do for this”; “Do I have to fill out a survey”; “What church are you from”, etc.  Just take the damn money! I was trying to be nice!  Others are very gracious.
  • You can find out a ton about what is important to your team, by listening to how and what they wanted to help others!

The Stories:

We had plenty of hugs, some crying, some cheers and a whole bunch of smiles!   We had people help out animals, babies, old people, young people, poor people, families, teens, schools, bartenders, servers and entrepreneurs.  I had one team member who wanted to share our experience and asked the person he gave his $100 to keep $25 and pass the rest on with the same instructions – 4 total people getting a nice smile in their day.  I had many team members stalk local grocery stores wanting to help others pay for their groceries – to make their week a little easier  – these stories were the funniest hearing how they stalked the aisles and ‘profiled’ the neediness of the individuals.   We heard from teammates who seemed to have a hard time giving the money away at every turn – some people, it would seem, are to proud to accept a simple gift of help (not something you see everyday in today’s world).

One big learning my team took away from this was that quite possibly – it would have been more rewarding if it was their own personal money – and not the companies money (I said I be willing to take it out of their check! 😉 ) But many decided the experience was so rewarding they wanted to do it on their own – and share the experience with their families – the Pay It Forward principle at it’s best.

I think I learned the most – about myself.  In the end I gave my money to a young Latino who had just started up his own business.  It’s tough to start a business in any climate – to be a young minority in Michigan, it might be even harder.  He captured my heart – his will, his enthusiasm, his naive confidence that it could only be successful!  I went looking to help someone who couldn’t help themselves and found myself supporting someone who decided, against all odds, to help himself.  I was drawn to support that.  I’m not sure what that says about me – but the experience made me ‘happy’ and made me feel a connection to my community that I didn’t feel before.  I’ll do this again.  Like my teammates at work – I’ll use my own money – I’ll involve my kids – I’ll try to hear more stories.

The money invested in this was the best investment in my company that I’ve made in a very long time.  Please steal this idea – it doesn’t have to be $100 bills – it can be $5, $10, whatever – you’ll be better for it!

 

 

Your Greed Stops You From Having a 4 Day Work Week

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“ Back in 1930, renowned economist John Maynard Keynes predicted technological advancements would mean we would all eventually work just 15 hours a week. That same year, evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley predicted the two-day work week. Both men warned that someday, we would have so much leisure time, we would be bored out of our minds.”

Can you imagine that? 15 hours per week! Bored out of your mind!

What the hell happened?!

According to a recent article in CNN/Money – we all got really greedy!

“These great thinkers were right about one thing. Technological progress has made workers more productive than ever before.

Yet rather than cutting the work week gradually over time (like the Europeans did), productivity gains have fueled a consumerism boom in the United States. So instead of taking time off, Americans are just buying much more stuff.

Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian at the University of Iowa, calls the shorter workweek the “forgotten American dream.”

In most cases, fewer hours mean workers might have to take a pay cut, and would not be able to buy as much. But in exchange, they’ll get more free time, save on child care costs and likely be healthier and happier in general.

For example, Dutch workers are on par with American workers in terms of productivity per hour. They pay higher taxes and earn less than Americans. But on average, they work roughly 11 weeks less than their American counterparts each year, have access to government-funded health care, pay little or nothing for a college education, and have far more leisure time than the American.

When UNICEF recently ranked 21 industrialized nations by well-being for children, Netherlands was on top and the United States was near the bottom, in 20th place.Guess who also ranked happier with life overall? The Dutch worker.But Americans still labor on.

“The idea that we can grow our economies forever and ensure everyone a full-time job is a myth,” Hunnicutt said. “We have to deliberately choose to work less and therefore buy less.”

So, are you willing to go with less, so you can work less?  I think most people would say – “No.”  I see it far to often, especially in the boom or bust economy of Michigan’s Auto Industry, when times are great and overtime is being worked by all – you see the new cars, the summer cottages being bought, etc.  People work more, to accumulate more, with the thinking at some point they’ll be able to stop and enjoy it all.  Then one day you look up and realize, you have to keep working to keep all that you’ve accumulated.  Consumerism is a bitch!

I wonder what life would be like if I had less.  A number of years ago my family relocated and we were between houses and staying in corporate apartment – all we had was our cars and some clothes.  My wife and I look back at how easy of a life that was!  No yard to mow, no house to constantly take care of, no keeping up with the Jones.  We took the kids to parks, we did more as a family, we were never happier, and we had less.  There’s something to say for less…

 

 

Actually, Money Does Buy Happiness!

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I think most people feel ‘charity’, in almost any form, makes people feel good.  You do something good for someone else, and it seems like whatever it was you did, makes you feel doubly good!  Harvard Business Review recently had a good article on how giving, especially money, can bring you happiness:

“Buffet recently penned an op-ed titled “My Philanthropic Pledge” — but rather than offer financial advice about giving, he suggested we give as a way to enhance our emotional wellbeing. Of his decision to donate 99% of his wealth to charity, Buffett said that he “couldn’t be happier.”

But do we need to give away billions like Buffet in order to experience that warm glow? Luckily for us ordinary folks, even more modest forms of generosity can make us happy. In a series of experiments, we’ve found that asking people to spend money on others — from giving to charity to buying gifts for friends and family — reliably makes them happier than spending that same money on themselves.

And our research shows that even in very poor countries like India and Uganda — where many people are struggling to meet their basic needs — individuals who reflected on giving to others were happier than those who reflected on spending on themselves. What’s more, spending even a few dollars on someone else can trigger a boost in happiness. In one study, we found that asking people to spend as little as $5 on someone else over the course of a day made them happier at the end of that day than people who spent the $5 on themselves.”

Who says money can’t buy happiness!  Just not in the way we traditionally think.  It’s not about the bigger house, or the nicer car, or the best wine – all those things will make you more comfortable in your life – but they aren’t guaranteed to bring you more happiness.  I’m also not naive to think that everyone would be happy giving away that which they worked hard for – for some that would be a nightmare – not a blessing.  That’s alright – that’s inclusion at its finest – we all have things that will make us happy.  I do think for the majority of our employees – donating time, money, skills, etc., helps them feel good about themselves – which makes it a little easier to feel happy about their place in the world.

Tomorrow morning I’m handing each one of my employees a $100 bill and asking them to go out into the world at some point their day and give it away – randomly – or not randomly – to someone other than themselves.  $100 isn’t a giant amount for my staff – but I’m sure it will have a big meaning to someone else – I think some of the people on my team will feel good about helping someone out – about surprising them and making their day/week/month.   My hope is they’ll come back with a smile and a story.  My hope is they’ll feel a little better about their day.  My hope is they’ll feel happy.  My hope is – money can buy happiness.

 

3 Myths of the ‘Cool’ Office

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I think the one thing that ‘normal’ HR Pros are sick of hearing about it the crap in HR that gets the most headlines in the media – The Cool Office Perks! Let’s face it the majority of HR Pros don’t have the budget to do anything close to what you hear about in magazines articles about the cool new start-ups or big IT firms like Google and Yahoo.  We can’t give our employees free lunches, and brand new open environment office spaces that look like a cross between a MTV Real World house and a abandoned slaughter house and unlimited time off!

The Atlantic had a great article on this recently that will for sure put ‘normal’ HR pros at ease on these escalation of perks:

“Don’t be fooled by the perks at all those Silicon Valley (and Alley) offices — it’s all just part of a subtle plot to control employee behavior. The founders of Fab.com, which just got itself a $1 billion valuation, admitted as much to Bloomberg’s Sarah Freier. The shopping site wields its beer on tap, free lunch, and ice-cream machine as a means to force Fab employees to send emails in a “certain font,” use high-quality paper, and always “be Fab” — whatever terrible thing that means. Those types of office perks abound at startups, of course, not only as a way to attract the best talent, but also to get that “talent” working on message, official office font included. Each and every kegerator serves as a reminder of what you owe the company…

It sounds like the best perk ever: You could, officially, and under official policy, get paid for a three-month summer vacation. But of course the increasingly popular you-work-so-hard-that-we-won’t-count strategy doesn’t work that way. First, most companies wouldn’t allow it. The marketing company Xiik, for example, boasts the limitless vacation offer, but in its fine print discourages long hiatuses. “There are no hidden agendas; xiik employees can take as much paid time off as needed,” claims a Xiik project manager on the company website, before clarifying what that really means: “As nice as it would be to regularly leave for months at a time, common sense prevails: In most cases, it simply doesn’t make sense to be away from work for extended periods.”

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with HR Pros across so many industries that involve this idea of how do you compete against all these perks?!  I’ve always come back to  – you don’t!  The perks are just perks  – they might help you hold onto some folks a bit longer – but they don’t make your employees better and they don’t raise the performance of your company.  In HR we need to figure out those things, first.   Here are the 3 Myths (Thank you Sally!) of the ‘Cool’ Office concept:

1. Offering Free food and drinks will keep our employees working longer and more productive. Workers apparently “waste” 2 billion minutes a day of “productivity” getting snacks, lunch, and coffee, according to Staples.

2. Having an ‘open’ office environment foster collaboration and productivity. A recent Quartz article outlines all the terrible things that come out of the open quarters, such as decreased productivity and more airborne illnesses.

3. Unlimited time off allows your employees the ultimate work-life balance – which will increase productivity and retention.  The reality is your work culture makes people feel bad about taking time off and discourages people from utilizing ‘unlimited’ time off policies.  The reason companies can offer ‘unlimited’ time off policies is because studies continue to show those organizations with these policies actually use less time off than those with set limit policies.  It’s a benefit to organizations to use this – not employees!

HR Announces – ‘We’re Out of Ideas’

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Recently the crew at FOT has been having some conversations about what’s new in HR.  It use to be all you had to do was show up at a HR conference and listen to someone from Zappos, Google, Sodexo, etc. to find out what were the latest and greatest happenings going on in HR!  But no more – it seems like HR is in a dead period of new ideas!  I blame the recession – why wouldn’t I – the ‘Great Recession’ gets blamed for everything – might as well take some HR heat!   Nobody at FOT could really come up with any ideas that were new.  But thankfully the good HR folks at Google came through one more idea, but I don’t how new it is…

From Quartz – Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring:

“Google has admitted that the headscratching questions it once used to quiz job applicants (How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? Why are manhole covers round?) were utterly useless as a predictor of who will be a good employee.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart…

Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and “behavioral interviewing,” such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.”

Yes, you are reading that correctly – Google’s ‘new’ HR idea is to go retro!  Back to behavioral interviewing and standardized interview decks – hello 90’s!  Isn’t that wonderful – I can’t believe Google didn’t have someone at SHRM 13 leading a session like “Google’s Strategic HR Innovations – Just Interview Them Stupid!”  HR ladies would have packed the house to find out how they to could jump into the 90’s.  Also, let’s just come right out corporately and validate to all those kids in college – you’re just wasting your time and spending your parents retirement.  I’ve really never been so excited for our industry!

So, I would like to take it upon myself and the entire HR community to let the world know – HR is out of ideas!

Here’s were we/HR stand:

– Still need to hire people

– Still need to train our employees

– Still need to provide benefits and pay administration

– Still planning the company picnic, and/or ‘holiday party

Long live HR.

2013 – Smoking In the Office

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I’ve decided I’m going to start allowing my employees to smoke in the office.  Maybe it’s watching too many episodes of Madmen, or maybe it’s just some psychological phenomenon about growing up with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. who all smoked that I weirdly like  hanging out with smokers – but I don’t smoke.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not allowing traditional lighting up – this is 2013 – we’re going Electronic!  E-Cigarettes are all the rage and I can’t think of a better way to cure my mental cravings about hanging out at smoke breaks than to just allow my staff to start lighting up – alright I don’t know if you call it lighting up maybe it’s powering up those E-Cigs and getting their E-Smoke on!

E-Cigarettes are coming big business because of the assumption they’re safer. From BusinessWeek:

“The electronic cigarette is about to have its turn in the spotlight. The battery-powered gadgets transform nicotine and other substances into an inhaled vapor and have been marketed as a safer alternative to tobacco smoke, which is drawn into the lungs and increases cancer risks. The rapidly growing e-cigarette business—expected to top $1 billion in annual sales in the next few years—is racing to command a bigger share of spending among smokers and potential smokers ahead of possible regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

This brings in all that was good about 1970’s business and modernizes it! (did you catch that the only thing I think about a ‘good’ 1970’s business was their ability to smoke in the office!) I can’t wait until my next big conference room meeting with 20+ employees all smoking away on their E-Cigs, talking sales, talking red meat they’ll grill that night – if that isn’t quintessential Americana I don’t know what is!  Sure its a little more metro-sexual America, but it’s 2013, let’s face it – so few of us can pull off the Marlboro Man look anymore!

I know most of you think I’m joking but wait and see HR Pros.  E-Cigarettes are not considered ‘cigarettes’ by the FDA.  If you have an employee come in and want to suck on a battery powered device at their desk that emits water vapor – are you going to tell them ‘No’!  Especially when that same employee could chose to take an hour+ per day off to stand outside and fire up for real?!  Doesn’t productivity and health demand you allow your employees to E-Light-Up at their desk or workstation?

What do you think HR Pros?  Will you join me in allowing your employees to E-Light Up in the office?  Do any of you allow this now?  Has any employee approached you and asked to do this?  Will you shoot the first employee who is standing outside taking a 10 minute smoke break who is puffing on a E-Cigarette?

Having Sex On The Job

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If you’ve been in HR for about a day you’ve had to deal with Worker’s Compensation claims and the longer you’re in HR the better the claims get.  This recent worker’s compensation claim from an Australian employee, though, might actually win (assuming this whole HR thing is a contest of who has the best story). From the Sidney Morning Herald:

“The female Commonwealth public servant at the centre of the case, whose name has been suppressed, was required to travel to regional NSW in 2007 and stayed at a motel booked by her employer.

She arranged to meet a male friend and, after going out for dinner, the pair went to her motel room and had sex.

In a statement in previous court hearings, the woman’s sexual partner said they were ”going hard” when a light fitting was pulled from the wall and fell on her. She suffered wounds to her nose and mouth, as well as psychological injuries, and has faced a lengthy legal battle to receive a payout.

Her claim was initially accepted by Comcare, but was revoked in 2010 and reviewed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which found sexual activity was ”not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay like showering, sleeping, eating”.

The woman appealed against that decision in the Federal Court and won in April last year, a judge finding the injuries were suffered in the course of her employment.”

So, here’s the game – most HR pros already know this, but for the new HR Pros – In the comments share you craziest worker’s compensation claim.  While you think the one example above can’t be beat – well, you’ve never played this game before!

Here’s mine:

“…”

You know what – I don’t have one even close to the example above.  You win Australia.