Following in the footsteps of Steven D. Levitt, economist and eccentric author of Freakonomics, Daniel Hamermesh has reduced the effect of being “ugly” to its monetary cost: $230,000.00. That is supposedly the lifetime earning reduction an ugly person suffers. In the New York Times on Sunday, he hypothesizes that ugly people should
No A**hole Policy
Believe it or not, my clients don’t always come to me for advice on how to get out of a crack of some kind. Occasionally, they just need a sounding board. Jessica Stillman’s recent post Are Your Bad Co-Workers Killing You? reminded me of a client lunch I had several weeks ago. The post talks
New Tool for Employers Prevents Discrimination in Hiring
“Private eyes, they’re watching you, they’re watching your every move . . .”
I don’t even particularly like Hall and Oates, but the song popped into my head as soon as I started reading Jennifer Preston’s article last week in the New York Times about a new investigative tool for employers. Social Intelligence is
A Watered-Down Argument for Bathroom Breaks
This morning I read a recent post from Suzanne Lucas the “Evil HR Lady”, an HR blogger that provides similar common sense observations about employment issues. The post was an answer to a supervisor question about an employee who drinks so much water and has to pee so often that she can’t get her
What BeKnown Means for Employers
I learned this morning from the Dallas Business Journal that Facebook has launched a rival site to Linkedin which is called BeKnown.com. Seriously? Is there any chance that we could shrink our online persona instead of increasing it? How many places do I truly need to be found? How many places do we 
want
Flying the Unfriendly Skies
Sheryl Jean recently reported in the Dallas Morning News on a letter of apology from a Southwest Airlines pilot to company employees for a rant he made with his microphone stuck in the on position that was heard by air traffic controllers and other pilots about how there were not any good dating prospects among