Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
A blog by the attorneys at the law firm of Ford & Harrison about the popular television series “The Office.” Each article takes a look at a different episode, and summarizes the employment law lessons for the week.
Litigation Value: $0 for Dunder-Mifflin (consider the bullets dodged for now), but I’d love to be the plaintiffs’ lawyer representing those poor souls who got ice from the machine in which Kevin stuck his formerly Kleenex-boxed feet I don’t normally cry at weddings, but I could see making an exception for the long-anticipated nuptials of […]
This week’s episode — “The Promotion” — had nothing to do with advancement in the workplace. In fact, the only thing it promoted was how to get fired. When the episode ended, I identified five Scranton employees whom David Wallace should discharge if he wants to minimize potential liability: Dwight. He opened the episode fantasizing about placing Jim […]
LITIGATION VALUE: $50,000 (in litigation costs on Darryl’s claims); damages continuing to pile up on Oscar’s claims. In tonight’s episode, “The Meeting,” we watched as Michael interfered with Jim’s attempt to obtain a promotion and falsified documents in Jim’s personnel file (clearly a problem, but not the most interesting problem in this episode). We also watched […]
Litigation value: $100,000 A new season of The Office is upon us! Although Michael Scott is hardly a man for all seasons (and unlikely to be confused with Thomas More, or any other saint), in last night’s premiere he provided us with yet another object lesson on employment law. This time the principle involved was […]
In the rerun episode of “Company Picnic,” Season 5’s finale, we saw the Dunder Mifflinites don branch t-shirts and head out for a day of friendly competition, team-building and — because this is Dunder Mifflin we’re dealing with — potential disaster. We already discussed the noteworthy events, such as Michael announcing the closing of the Buffalo branch to […]
Tonight we revisited the episode “Heavy Competition,” which is rife with the kind of employee misconduct that keeps us lawyers busy. Last time we looked at this episode, we talked about trade-secret violations as well as Dwight Schrute’s personal liability for his bizarre antics, which included placing a dead fish in an air-conditioning vent in […]
As summer rolls on and TV reruns continue, I did like Michael Scott would do during an average workday: I turned my attention to surfing the Internet. I came across an article on the Wall Street Journal’s site entitled “Did You Hear the One About the Recession?” by Kayleen Schaefer. The article discusses how workplace […]
Tonight featured two more repeats of The Office. Summer is great, well, except for the TV (come on, is NYC Prep really giving you your fix?). Since I figured we pretty much covered everything blogworthy in those episodes when they first aired, I turned to the show’s official website for inspiration this week. NBC’s fun […]
This week was a rerun of the episode “Golden Ticket,” where we learned that Dwight keeps a diary, mostly about what Michael does. While I’m not recommending that you document every little thing the people in your office (and particularly your boss!) do, the episode is a good reminder about the importance of documentation. It […]
On last night’s rerun episode, Lecture Circuit, Michael, whose office had the highest sales, traveled to other Dunder Mifflin offices to share his “secret recipe for success.” Along the way, Michael manages to offend every single woman he meets. Poor Pam is the is the main target of Michael’s harassment. He asks her to take […]