Started in the Bay Area. Been working in PR for 11 years -- enterprise and consumer tech -- and have lived in a rural town in Idaho since 1998. By day I live the scrambled and fast-paced life of a comms consultant with a firm in Silicon Valley. The rest of the time I'm just a flip flop-wearin' wife and mom to two kids in a town where you have to hunt down the rare wireless connection, the only highway is two lanes, and the post office workers know me by name.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Making my fave TV show a "write off"


As you all know (if you have been following along), The Office is one of my favorite shows. Well, now, I've found a way to make it more educational. There is a blogger, Julie Elgar, out there that specializes in HR, with a focus on The Office -- a petri dish of infractions. After each episode the HR Hero blog evaluates the potential damage Dunder Mifflin may incur based on the latest crazy behavior in the Scranton Branch.


For example, for last Thursday's episode where Dwight "heroically" pepper sprayed Roy (and many others) in the office and Michael negotiates a salary increase by using sex as a bargaining chip with Jan, Elgar places a $350k price tag on last week's show.


From Elgar's recent post:


Employers who fail to fire employees who tape pepper spray canisters, nunchucks,
and throwing stars to the bottom of their desks are playing with fire. Expensive
fire. Sure, Roy started it, and I’m glad Dunder Mifflin fired him. But what
about Dwight? After all, the man kept weapons at work for God knows how long.
And if Roy can prove that Dunder Mifflin knew about them and failed to take
action, then he just might have a claim for damages (e.g. eye doctor
appointments, pain and suffering, etc.). Maybe Toby should go ahead and start to
prepare for this deposition too while he is at it.

Check her site out, pretty eucational AND humorous. Tough to do for this "litigation happy" time in HR. ;)

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