As part of our ongoing commitment to providing the finest in employment law education, we’re counting down our Top Ten Wackiest Employment Law Cases.

Here’s Case #3 . . .

Diary of a Slacker

An Iowa judge denied unemployment benefits to a hotel employee who was fired for keeping a journal that described her truly impressive efforts to avoid work.

Emmalee Bauer, sales coordinator for the Des Moines Sheraton, made the following entries in a 300-page journal she kept on her work computer:

• I am going to be typing all my thoughts instead of writing all day.  That way, there isn’t any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off. 
• This typing thing seems to be doing the trick.  It looks like I’m hard at work on something very important.
• I am going to sit right her and play Elf Bowling or some other nonsense.  Once lunch is over, I will come right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon.
• I just have to get through the next seven hours and forty-six minutes and then I will be free.
• I don’t feel like doing a single worthwhile thing today.  It’s 11:00 and so far I have stuck to that.
• It’s noon already and I don’t feel like I have accomplished a [expletive deleted] thing.  Accomplishment is overrated, anyway.
• I have managed to waste half of the day doing nothing constructive.  That isn’t exactly an easy task, either.
• I have an hour of time that needs to be wasted — I mean “spent wisely.”  I know that’s a crock.  I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access.
• I haven’t really accomplished anything in a long while . . . and I am still getting paid more than I have ever had before.  It’s actually quite nice when I think of it that way.  I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it.

Not too shockingly, the judge concluded that Bauer’s writings evidenced a refusal to work and “amusement at getting away with it.”

Bauer reportedly is seeking a publisher for her journal so that she can share her work tips with the rest of the world.

(Sources:  Des Moines Register, cbsnews.com)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 5:14 am and is filed under Dumb But Fun Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.