I've been vacationing by the shores of Gitche-Gumee this week, so I'm trying to give myself a little blog-cation as well. Here are some entertaining and controversial legal or employment-related developments from the news before I left. With apologies to John Oliver, let's just call it "Last Week Today." (Hey! I'm on vacation!)

Feel free to debate and discuss in the comment ...

If you have a poor performer, is it better to make a clean break and fire him, or is it better to prolong his (and your) agony?

That is obviously a biased question, but some employers will do almost anything to avoid firing an employee, including the following:

• Nothing
• Issue 8 bazillion warnings but never act on them
• Offer a demotion, or a transfer to a less demanding job
• Let the employee ...

Here's a lesson: Don't call your employee an "old fart," especially if you think you may need to fire him someday.

And don't call his co-workers "old farts" right before you fire the co-workers.

And don't give your "old fart," who has only a first-level warning on his record, three or four "progressive" warnings on the day that you fire him.

And don't try to invoke "employment at ...

Is "digital native" the latest code term for "young"?

A hot topic for the past few days, after an article on the subject appeared in Fortune, has been whether it's discriminatory for an employer to specify in recruiting that it's seeking to hire "digital natives." A "digital native" is someone who was born into the digital world, which supposedly means people born in 1990 and later.

You be the judge of these real-life employment disputes! (I've changed the names to make it harder for you to Google the answers right away, but the answers with links are at the end of the post.)

1. Susan and her husband, who are white, are cleaning out their attic one weekend. They come across some quaint old clothes and sepia-tinted pictures, and among the treasures Susan finds an old ...

Let's say your CEO fires a 53-year-old woman and says he's doing it because she's "old and ugly."

If she finds out about it, can she sue for age discrimination?

My guess is 100 percent of you would say, "What are you, stupid? Of course she can!"

"Have a social media policy? Chances are, it's illegal." Please join our webinar on Social Media and the NLRA: Common Problems and Best Practices

I conducted harassment training this week for a client, and, interestingly, the attendees of all ages seemed to be more curious about age-based harassment than any of the other categories we discussed.

Meanwhile, there has been a debate on the internet this week that is of grave concern to us all.

No, I'm not talking about whether Mitt Romney committed an intolerable gaffe by criticizing ...

The Chinese New Year is almost upon us. In honor of the Year of the Dragon, and in fond farewell to bilingual Jon Huntsman, who announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race (hmm . . . speaking Mandarin in a Republican debate? . . . not sure that's a choice I'd have made), we have enough employment and HR blog posts to get you through the entire new year's season without repeating ...

It's been another zany week or so in the world of labor and employment law, rivalling Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. Here are a few items that jumped out at me. (Each subhead is a line from a Marx Brothers movie or the title of a Marx Brothers movie. Answers at the end.)

"Hurry up, or you'll be late for jail!" Pepsi Beverages (formerly Pepsi Bottling Co.) agreed to a pre-litigation settlement ...

A cornucopia of random employment law issues for your long weekend.

Lessons for employers from the Natalie Wood investigation. (OK, I admit this is a shameless tie-in designed to get you to read a legal blog over a holiday weekend.) But the reopening of the Natalie Wood drowning investigation after 30 years does contain a good lesson for employers -- to wit, that no matter how much time has ...