Allow me to start this week with some self-promotion. To the immediate right of this post is a sidebar entitled Subscribe. It uses technology called RSS (which is short for Really Simply Syndication). RSS will deliver daily updates of this blog directly to your PC, either in a feed reader (such as Google Reader, which I use and recommend), or to your email (no spam or unsolicted email, I promise). To fully understand RSS and how it will greatly simplify your web surfing and information gathering experience, please check out Dan Schwartz's excellent post on this topic at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog. If you want to receive daily updates on what is going on in the world of employment law in Ohio and elsewhere, please consider clicking the orange box to the right or entering your email.
Dan also earns the honor for the post of the week - Court Flushes Away Disability Claim; Finds that Toilet-Training Book for Kids Not Enough to Create Hostile Work Environment, which discusses a Connecticut case in which an employee with some unpleasant gastrointestinal issues claimed that he was harassed on account of his disability by his co-workers leaving a book called "The Book of Poop" on his desk.
The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog asks: are Blackberrys the next battleground in wage-and-hour litigation? Be very afraid that plaintiffs' law firms are posting on their websites, "Have you been assigned a BlackBerry or a phone? If so, give us a call." For more on this topic, take a look at this analysis by Jeffrey M. Schlossberg and Kimberly B. Malerba. I've also touched on this topic before, in Can't get away from the office.
Andrew Scott-Howman's most excellent Life at Work blog, which I've recently discovered, has a post on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, discrimination against bald people.
Kris Dunn, The HR Capitalist, writes on the HR nightmare presented by employees who carry weapons in their cars.
From the ABA Journal comes a story about Whirlpool's suspension of 39 employees for smoking. Whirlpool, which charges its smokers $500 more in health insurance premiums, claims that the employees lied on their insurance forms by claiming that they had stopped smoking.
Finally, Nolo's Employment Law Blog gives a good update on the current state of religion in the workplace.