Can an employer require its employees to be clean shaven if workers wear facial hair for religious reasons? The situation gets even more complicated when workplace safety is involved.

A federal court has ruled the District of Columbia can’t force its firefighters to be clean shaven.

The court ruled firefighters who wear beards for religious reasons are exempt from the District’s no-beards policy under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The court said the District failed to prove its argument that beards stand in the way of good respirator fits. Firefighters use respirators to breathe when fires create a lack of oxygen.

The issue surrounds the firefighters’ use of self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBAs).

There are two types: Those with positive pressure have been shown to protect against any leakage that might be caused by facial hair.

However, questions remain about leakage with negative-pressure SCBAs.

The court ruled the District didn’t show why firefighters with beards could not be redeployed elsewhere when negative-pressure respirators were required.

As it stands now, the ruling is the opposite of what’s required by OSHA: “The [respirator fit] test shall not be conducted if there is any hair growth between the skin and the facepiece sealing surface, such as stubble beard growth, beard, mustache or sideburns which cross the respirator sealing surface.”

However, OSHA regulations don’t cover public employees.

Cite: Potter v. District of Columbia, U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, No. 07-7163, 3/6/09.

We can all probably agree on this: Criticizing your employer on the Web is a stupid thing to do. But what should the punishment be?

Dan Leone was the west gate chief on game days at the Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field. He worked on game days for the Eagles for six years.

Recently, he became upset at the Eagles’ decision to let longtime Safety Brian Dawkins sign with the Denver Broncos.

Leone expressed his frustration with Dawkins’ departure by posting this on his Facebook page: “Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver … Dam Eagles R Retarted!!” (We haven’t corrected any spelling in the post.)

Leone regretted his post soon after making it and took it down.

Less than two days after posting his remarks, Leone says he was contacted by the team’s director of event operations, Leonard Bonacci, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Leone says Bonacci told him they had to talk about the Facebook post.

Two days later, Leone says, he received a call from the team’s guest services manager, Rachel Vitagliano, who fired him over the phone in a call that lasted less than 10 minutes. Leone says he never heard back from Bonacci.

Leone says he was ready to apologize, and did so when he got the call that he was fired. He says Vitagliano didn’t want to hear it and told him he couldn’t be trusted, the post made the team look bad and the only option was to fire him.

As you might imagine, Leone’s story has become a célèbre. The article in the Inquirer notes that he grew up in the shadow of the Eagles’ old Veterans Stadium and that he has a neurological disorder called transverse myelitis. The disorder requires him to do his job at the stadium sometimes in a wheelchair.

The title of the article is a rallying cry: Cold Eagles sure are thin-skinned. It suggests the Eagles could have handled the situation with a warning, a suspension and that Leone deserved a face-to-face meeting even though he was a part-time employee.

Leone says, “If they called me right now and told me to come back to work, I would. I’m not holding any grudges. I just want to do my job.”

So, what do you think? Was the firing too harsh? What about the way it was allegedly handled? (The Eagles won’t comment.) Is a suspension with a warning a better way to handle this situation? Does it depend on exactly what’s said in an employee’s Web post? How would you handle an employee’s Web post critical of your company?

Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

How many times have you had to change your company’s dress code to address situations that no one previously thought of? Next question: Does your company’s dress code cover hats?

The borough of Littlestown, PA, recently told a school crossing guard he could no longer where his signature silly hats on the job because they were unprofessional and a distraction to drivers. They told him to wear his standard-issue crossing guard hat instead.

Children called Larry Douthwaite “Hat Man.” His collection includes a 2-foot-tall stovepipe hat, a pharaoh-style covering and one that looks like he has a jet airplane sitting on top of his head.

Douthwaite told WGAL-TV that he wore the hats for the kids at first. But then he noticed the hats helped him be safe because people were more likely to notice him.

After he started wearing his crossing guard hat every day, it didn’t take long for people in the community to notice that his funny hats were gone.

People wanted Douthwaite’s fun hats back. Public support for him was huge. WGAL ran a survey, and 96% said he should be able to wear the fun hats.

“I think they are tired of having fun things sucked out of their life, and I think the reaction mushroomed because of that,” said Douthwaite.

Happy ending

When citizens speak up in one voice about an issue, politicians often listen.

The Littlestown Borough Council voted unanimously to allow Douthwaite to continue wearing his hats.

How did Douthwaite celebrate his victory? By wearing his pharaoh hat on the job the day after the borough council vote.

So, here are some questions regarding this story:

• Should Douthwaite be allowed to wear the silly hats? Do you think they’d be a help or hindrance for a school crossing guard?
• Have you ever had a special dress-up day at work to help improve morale? Maybe Hawaiian shirt day?
• In these tough economic times, should HR allow some rules, such as dress code, to be bent a little bit if it’ll improve morale?

Let us know your thoughts via the Comments Box below.

Imagine this: A company tells some of its former employees, “We put too much in your severance check. Please give the extra amount back.”

It really happened. And it wasn’t just any employer — it was Microsoft.

The software giant attempted to recoup some severance money from 25 recently fired workers it mistakenly overpaid.

The employees received a letter which said, “This letter is to inform you that an inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment in severance pay by Microsoft. We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.”

There’s no word on the amount of the overpayments.

On second thought …

A scanned copy of such a letter first appeared on the Web site TechCrunch. After that — well, you know how things spread on the Web.

Shortly thereafter, Microsoft announced it had made a mistake.

“We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner,” an e-mailed statement said. Microsoft “will not seek any payment from those individuals.”

Microsoft had laid off a total of 1,400 employees, the first of 5,000 planned layoffs.

As usual with these types of stories, Microsoft has refused to give any more details — so that’s all there is.

But, we’ll pose some questions anyway: Was it correct for Microsoft to ask for the overpayments back in the first place? Would it matter if the amounts were $10, $100 or $1,000? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

In this tough economy, it’s hardly unusual for people to look for second jobs to make ends meet. Example: A teacher advertised online that she was looking for extra work because her bills were piling up. Unfortunately, her ad was on the “casual encounters” section of a popular Web site. And her school computer was involved.

Update: The Columbus Dispatch has now reported that teacher, Amber Carter has resigned from her teaching position and pled not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of prostitution. Prosecutors are still reviewing a charge of unauthorized use of a computer that the sheriff’s office filed against Carter. HR Blunders’ original post on this story continues below.

Now, fourth-grade teacher Amber Carter has been charged with prostitution. She’s admitted she posted an ad on Craigslist and used a school computer to send an undercover officer e-mails arranging a meeting, according to the Logan County sheriff’s office.

And until her case moves further along in the legal system, she is still collecting her teacher’s salary of $56,000, even though the Bellefontaine, OH, school district has placed her on administrative leave.

Detectives say it appears Carter used her school computer to meet men and women and charge them $50 or $100 for various sex acts.

The investigation started when the local sheriff’s office received an anonymous e-mail saying a local woman was advertising sex services online, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

An undercover officer posed as an interested customer and exchanged 24 e-mails with Carter.

In an e-mail sent on a Monday at 9:07 a.m., well after school had begun for the day, she offered sex and suggested a time.

The next day, Carter took a half-day of sick leave and left work early. She was arrested shortly after noon.

The Dispatch obtained a recording of Carter’s meeting with the undercover officer. She took $50 in exchange for sex. (Caution: The recording contains explicit content.)

Work computer seized

Besides the prostitution charge, which is a misdemeanor, Carter faces a fifth-degree felony count of unauthorized use of property. Detectives have seized her school computer.

She has a spotless 13-year record with Bellefontaine schools. The district superintendent is quoted as saying he’d like to fire her now “but constitutional rights and due process come into play so the lawyers are proceeding properly.”

School district lawyers have suggested to Carter that she resign, but she hasn’t.

Was this an isolated incident for Carter? Sgt. Ryan Furlong doesn’t think so. He suspects Carter has been doing this for a while because “she was calm, cool and collected in that hotel parking lot. Not nervous at all. This wasn’t her first time.”

Certainly, this is an extreme case of an employee in financial trouble looking for an extra source of employment. Does your company have a policy about second jobs? What would happen if one of your employees used a company computer for a side business — even one that’s not illegal? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Few companies these days can afford unproductive employees. What would happen if HR found an employee who sat in his office all day doing nothing and got paid a full-time salary?

For starters, the person might be given something to do, or the position might be eliminated.

But that’s not the case for Randall Hinton, an employee of New York state’s government.

He sits at a desk doing little else for eight hours a day and is paid $93,803.

Hinton, a Native American, says he’s being discriminated against because of his national origin and retaliated against for having sued the state years ago. He’s filed a lawsuit against the state.

His job has been director of investigations for the state Insurance Fund since February 2002. However, he claims he hasn’t investigated anything or directed any other employees’ investigations because his superiors are blackballing him.

Hinton sued Gov. George Pataki’s administration 10 years ago, alleging discrimination, according to the Times Union. At the time, he was chief of investigations at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and refused to leave his post to make room for a Republican appointee.

An official claims friction developed between Hinton and the DEC because he wanted to go to the police academy to become a sworn DEC officer, but hadn’t taken required civil service tests.

As part of a settlement, Hinton was guaranteed state employment as a director of investigations. He was moved from DEC to the Insurance Fund.

Hinton claims he hasn’t been given meaningful work because some leftover members of Pataki’s team still control the Insurance Fund in Democratic Gov. David Paterson’s administration. His former boss says those in charge told him not to let Hinton handle anything of substance.

Hinton was assigned to supervise a few customer service representatives. He complained that the task wasn’t appropriate for the director of investigations. Those employees were regrouped, and now Hinton’s only official duty is to sign one person’s time sheet every two weeks.

The Insurance Fund did recently offer Hinton oversight of private detective agencies hired by the fund. But Hinton dismissed the offer because he didn’t want to do contract assurance and work for an administrator who was in a entry-level management post.

E-mail set him off

The Times Union reports some of his former colleagues say Hinton was obsessed with becoming a cop. Hinton says he attempted to become an environmental conservation officer because that would allow him to retire to his tribe as a law enforcer.

If Hinton has been sitting around for seven years now without much to do, what caused him to take action now?

In November he got an e-mail from his manager that said the Insurance Fund wanted to recognize “the significant contributions and considerable role of Native Americans” and that Gov. Paterson had issued a proclamation for Native American Month.

Hinton says he wants his dignity back. For now, though, he doesn’t know how he’d get through his “work” day without his iPod.

Let us know what you think about this story in the Comments Box below.

When twice the usual number of employees call out sick — and it happens on Super Bowl Sunday — is it a case of couch potato fever? Or, as union representatives suggested in one case, was it burnout because of staff cutbacks? You make the call.

The city of Atlanta had to close five of its fire stations on Super Bowl Sunday because 27 firefighters called in sick. The average number of firefighters out sick on any given day is 13.

Enough staffers reported to work the following day to keep all the stations open.

City Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran blamed the temporary closures on a combination of staffing reductions, hiring freezes and furloughs, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Cochran said firefighters call in sick more often on a weekend with a holiday or big event like the Super Bowl. However, he said he didn’t believe this was an organized action.

The head of the firefighter union, Lt. Jim Daws, said staffers called in sick because they get “burned out” by having fewer co-workers. Atlanta has also done away with overtime for firefighters to bridge temporary staffing problems.

Minimum staffing to operate is 147 firefighters. On Sunday there were 131 on duty.

Daws says there wasn’t Super Bowl-related goofing off. He said the larger number of absences is the consequence of budget cuts.

Cochran said, “Some of our members genuinely are sick.”

Can employers prevent this?

Some companies have developed policies to prevent employees from using sick days around long holiday weekends. Example: To earn holiday pay, employees must work the entire workday before and the day after the holiday. Exceptions can be made when an employee asks ahead of time to use a vacation day or if the worker can produce a doctor’s note.

Has your company ever experienced a problem with workers taking sick days before or after a holiday, or on the day of a big event, such as the Super Bowl? Did you have more employees call out the day after the Super Bowl, possibly nursing hangovers? And does your company have a policy to prevent this sort of thing from happening? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A high school girls’ basketball coach was fired after he said he would not apologize for badly beating another team.

Covenant School in Dallas recently defeated Dallas Academy in girls basketball 100-0.

After the game, Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement on its Web site regretting the outcome of the shutout: “It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition.” The statement was signed by the school’s headmaster and board chairman.

Covenant Coach Micah Grimes sent an e-mail to The Dallas Morning News that said he didn’t agree with his school’s statement.

He wrote: “I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed. We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.”

The school’s headmaster would not comment when asked whether Grimes’ firing was connected to his statement to the newspaper.

The score at the half was 59-0. A parent who attended the game said Covenant continued to make 3-pointers even in the fourth quarter.

Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It hasn’t had a win in the last four seasons. The school specializes in teaching students with “learning differences” such as short attention spans or dyslexia.

The Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools doesn’t have a “mercy” rule for girls basketball. However, the association’s director, Edd Burleson said “a golden rule” should have applied in this contest.

According to Burleson, the losing team “showed much more character than the coach that allowed that score to get out of hand. It’s up to the coach to control the outcome.”

Since this case involves a personnel decision which an employer is keeping private, there are details we don’t know — such as exactly why Grimes was fired.

But the situation does raise several questions. Organized sports can provide a means to teach children and teens useful workplace skills, such as teamwork. Do you agree with the fired coach’s decision to allow the score to reach 100-0? Do you agree with the headmaster’s apology? And would sending an e-mail to a newspaper, disputing his boss’ statement, be insubordinate enough to merit firing?

Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Calling it an act of mercy, an employer has decided to allow a warehouse worker to collect his pension despite the fact that he stole on the job.

George Seeholzer was fired by the town of Palm Beach, FL, for allegedly stealing four car tires from the town’s warehouse and selling them for $250 on the Internet.

Now the Town Council has voted 4-1 to allow him to still collect his pension of $15,700 a year. He’ll also be allowed to retain his medical benefits at a cost of $172 a month, which is half the premium. He was a 12-year employee of the town.

Council members’ reasoning: They say Seeholzer, who is 66, is in poor health and would have lost his health benefits along with the pension. One council member called his situation “heartbreaking.”

Employees of Palm Beach terminated for unethical conduct aren’t eligible for their pension unless the council takes the unusual step of deciding to let them have it, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.

Seeholzer’s firing cost him $68,000 in early-retirement pay.

The one council member who voted against giving him the benefits, Susan Markin, said granting him retirement sends the wrong message to other town employees.

He filed a lawsuit, too

On top of all this, Seeholzer sued the town alleging it owes him unpaid overtime. In exchange for granting him retirement, Seeholzer has dropped his lawsuit.

Seeholzer claimed he planned but forgot to give the town the $250 he got from the sale of the tires.

What do you think about the outcome of this case? What would your employer do if an employee stole company property worth $250? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Why are employees reluctant to speak up about improprieties where they work? Retaliation is feared, as a municipal employee in Florida is claiming in a lawsuit.

Danilo Benedit, a procurement supervisor for the city of Coral Gables, wore a wire to help police investigate the city manager’s cover-up of questionable credit card charges.

Now he’s filed a lawsuit claiming the city violated the Florida whistle-blower laws that protect government employees who report illegal activities.

Benedit hasn’t been fired from his job, but he claims he’s been subjected to an increasingly hostile work environment, according to the Miami Herald.

His lawsuit lists a five-month delay in his performance evaluation and receiving his first negative one ever as retaliatory acts against him.

Benedit also claims he’s been ostracized by co-workers and has been unable to complete his job functions because they are keeping critical information from him.

The lawsuit alleges the city posted an ad for his job position.

City Commissioner Ralph Cabrera says Benedit’s job was downgraded from a director’s position to an officer position similar to what had been done in another department. He added that Benedit was allowed to apply for the new position.

Cover-up investigated

Last year, after City Manager David Brown’s credit card expenses were criticized in a local weekly paper, Brown asked Benedit to help backdate receipts that would show he reimbursed the city for two questionable charges months before he really did.

Brown was charged with a civil violation of public records laws. He resigned his city position under pressure.

Brown also asked Benedit to falsify documents related to a city project and to award a contract to a firm that wasn’t the lowest bidder.

Benedit claims his problems at work come from fellow employees who are still loyal to Brown.