Friday Diversion #8: The HP Retirement Fund

One of my favorite employment-related ways to waste time is to read about the golden parachutes ousted CEOs receive after they (or their companies) royally muck things up.

No, seriously. That’s what passes as fun for me.

This week, HP disclosed what it’s departing leader, Léo Apotheker, is getting as a reward for killing the company’s market share and stock price over the past 11 months or so. I won’t bore you with the details – that’s what Forbes is for – but here’s a snippet:

• $7.2 million in severance
• $3.56 million in accelerated-vesting stock
• Only 424,000 of the restricted stock units that he was eligible for for, you know, doing a good job (he could’ve gotten over 700,000 shares, if only he’d, you know, done a good job)
• a $2.4 million bonus (?!)
• and relocation expenses back to France or Belgium.

All this is more awesome when you put it in perspective, though. If you remember, before Mr. Apotheker there was Mark Hurd, who also left the company under not-the-best circumstances. And he actually made HP some money.

HP may be wisening up, though. Their incoming CEO, Meg Whitman, is taking a $1.00 salary, with an annual bonus of $2-6 million, depending on how badly she screws things up over there.  And, apparently, Meg’s payout will be considerably less if when they let her go some time in 2012.

Friday Diversion #7 – And You Thought Your Job Was Dangerous

Note: Today’s Friday Diversion is not funny. It’s not dire or anything – then it wouldn’t be a diversion, really – but I didn’t want to get your hopes up for comedy and then drop a public radio story on you.

I am always drawn to stories of how people work. Maybe its a Chicago thing, I don’t know. Well, here in Chicago, the local NPR affiliate has a little mini-show about science called Clever Apes, and the other day, they ran this story that I found fascinating, where the host got to see “how people work with deadly bugs like anthrax, plague, MRSA and others” in a Federally-chartered research laboratory set up after the 2001 Anthrax scare.

The story spends a lot of time discussing the intricacies of donning and doffing workwear and other precautionary measures that the researchers take before and after they handle things like the plague. In one of those bizarre life-twists, another story broke this week that a researcher at the facility’s sister-lab was infected with Bacillus cereus, the same pathogen the researchers are working on in the story. Clever Apes’s host, Gabriel Spitzer, interviewed the lab’s director about the infection.

The two stories paint a fascinating picture of what these scientists go through every day just to get to work. Definitely worth a listen.

Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever say my job’s making me sick ever again.1

1. Ba-dum-bum! [↩]

Friday Diversion #6: Oh, the Irony!

Today’s diversion comes from the mother of all joke sources: an EEOC press release.

Earlier this week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it had filed suit against a national employer for disability discrimination. I know, I know. On its own, that doesn’t sound funny at all.

But when the employer is the Scooter Store, that maven of mid-day TV “Medicare-will-pay-for-it” advertising, I’m sorry, that’s frigging hilarious.

After the title, though, the rest of the press release is not as entertaining:

The EEOC’s lawsuit … alleges that The Scooter Store failed to accommodate an employee’s request for a reasonable accommodation for his disability, psoriatic arthritis, after he sustained a knee injury that required a temporary absence from work. The EEOC’s suit states that the employee timely informed the company he was incapacitated until further notice and that he required a leave of absence to seek treatment for his disability. However, The Scooter Store refused his request and instead fired him, purportedly for job abandonment, although he had presented medical documentation.

What it is, of course, is ironic. And not just in the 1990′s pop music way. This is the classical literature, Greek Philosophy sort of irony. A disability store! Discriminating against a disabled person! And they make scooters! And his disability was a knee injury, which would potentially require a scooter!!

ARE YOU GETTING THIS?!  IRONY!

It’s entirely possible that I only think this is funny because I was an English major at Iowa, and had to debate what irony was with a bunch of Writer’s Workshop wannabes1 but the fact remains. Irony + Employment Law = Funny-to-Tim.

I thought about where I should link to a definition of irony, but they were all so boring. Then I remembered this graphic which explains the debate over the concept better than I’ve ever seen it. (Caution – There’s Cursing and Grown-Up-Style Drawings on this Poster). Here’s an excerpt:

1. One time, I told one of them that I thought irony was they opposite of wrinkly, and the girl believed me. We fought about it for, like, an hour. True story. [↩]