I was at a seminar all day about labor laws. Fun things like harassment claims, law suits, Supreme Court rulings, etc… It’s the way most people would like to spend their Thursdays.

It all started out okay. I dropped off my son (who actually cooperated this morning) and was driving towards my seminar and I was really struck by how beautiful everything looked. The trees are orange, red, yellow and a little bit green. I love Fall. I was married in October because I love the colors on the trees.

I arrived at the seminar location and it’s a beautiful building on a big golf course. I’ve been there before. We always have lunch in this big atrium with lots of light and you can see the colorful leaves on the trees when you look up. The lunch was wonderful and I met a whole bunch of new people (that I probably won’t ever see again). And then…I looked out the window and saw snow. Snow!!!!!! I’m just not ready for it yet. I haven’t even had time to enjoy my Fall yet.

Anyhow, the attorneys at my seminar spent the day telling us about all the new laws and all the horror story cases that they’ve ever been on. One attorney said something that made so much sense. He said, “It’s really common sense.” In this day and age, how is it that one branch of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) can be getting thousands of claims in a year? And, though some of them prove to be false, quite a few of them aren’t. Where are we failing so badly that there are still so many people who don’t see treating people as equals (despite race, age, gender, etc…) as common sense?

I count myself lucky that I’ve never faced this in the workplace. I’ve always worked in Human Resources though…and, if that office is discriminating…the whole company would be pretty hopeless. So, I spent the afternoon, between speakers dreaming up ways to come back and work on training our supervisors a little better on the rules and regulations. In my thoughts, I often included a big hammer. In reality, I suppose that I will have to be that hammer.