The second week of the new TV season and no new episode. Seriously. Not cool.
Since I already wrote about Sarah Palin a few weeks ago, I’m just going to use something I didn’t cover in last week’s episode.
There was a funny part where Oscar played a joke on Holly about being offended with her comment that maybe she should turn into a lesbian. Holly saw her life (or at least her career in HR) flash before her eyes as Oscar said with a straight face, “Oh, you think it’s a choice.”
While I appreciated someone on the show actually at least considering what the lawful thing to do was, this incident raised a good point. People in any group can feel discriminated against even if the perceived discrimination seems harmless to the offender. We need to remember to treat all of these groups with respect.
For some reason, homosexuality in particular seems to be talked about at work in a disrespectful manner. Just because Karen on Will & Grace can use any number of derogatory terms to talk about Will and Jack doesn’t mean that our employees can treat this issue so flippantly at our offices. Companies need to treat any comments about homosexuality just like they do comments about race, religion, gender, etc.
I’m sure we’ll have many more reminders this season of how not to treat homosexuals in the workplace. Thankfully, there don’t seem to be any lawyers in Scranton so we can count on Dunder Mifflin staying open for years to come.
That brings up another question: Can Kevin qualify for ADA now, since he is “regarded” as disabled by his HR Manager?