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Consider the following two scenarios: A male employee requests extended leave to provide at-home care to a sick child. Instead of evaluating the request based on his eligibility for leave, the employer questions why the child’s mother can’t care for her. A qualified female employee with two preschool children is considered a “poor fit” for […]
LITIGATION VALUE: $300,000+ Holding a Survivor-like contest to determine who will be recommended for a promotion to regional manager is not going to end well for Dunder Mifflin. At all. If the decision is challenged (which it almost certainly will be) then the company is going to be asked to articulate a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason […]
LITIGATION VALUE: 1,000,000 + The “women’s appreciation” meeting was a bad idea that was poorly executed. I’m not saying that Dunder Mifflin cannot or should not recognize the achievements of its female employees. It should. I just think that the meeting shouldn’t be announced by saying “I know the crap out of women” and should […]
LITIGATION VALUE: $45,000 Creed’s actions in setting up Debbie Brown to be fired for his mistake were not, in and of themselves, illegal. And, if Dunder Mifflin acted in good faith when it fired Debbie, then it probably didn’t do anything illegal either. At least not on the facts in this episode. Employees can be […]
by Mark I Schickman “Google” has already become a popular verb, meaning to research a name through Internet sources. The word is about to get a secondary meaning: “to provide wall-to-wall perks to company employees.” Largely because of those broad and unusual employee benefits, Google has taken a lock on the top slot on Fortune […]
LITIGATION VALUE: $150,000 I empathize with Michael. There is nothing worse than the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize that you just accidentally forwarded that witty e-mail (which you worked on all morning) mocking your boss’s bad suits and strange habits to your boss, herself, rather than to your clever […]
by Scott Holt and Margaret DiBianca For some employees, the weekend starts early, say Wednesday or Thursday, with shorts, jeans, T-shirts, tank tops, and other very casual attire in the office. Revealing clothes, in turn, disclose body piercings and tattoos — things you may prefer to keep covered up. If your employees are coming to […]
Litigation Value: $40,000 Duty calls and Julie is not able to blog this week due to work. I’m a fellow labor and employment attorney with Ford & Harrison and also a fan of the show. This week’s episode certainly did not disappoint. The episode starts with the Dunder Mifflin employees gathered around for a “safety […]
Litigation Value: $350,000 Phew – finally a new episode! While any episode of The Office is a good one, it’s nice to have new material to discuss. As always, the gang at Dunder Mifflin did not disappoint with this week’s super-sized episode. Employers who fail to fire employees who tape pepper spray canisters, nunchucks, and […]
Last night’s five episode marathon of The Office was an HR executive’s nightmare! Below, I’ve blogged about the litigation value of each of the five episodes separately — four of which are entirely new entries as the episodes were from previous seasons. While they aired as individual episodes, if these incidents were to occur in […]