Today at 10 a.m., the EEOC is scheduled to vote on whether to rescind its 2024 Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. 

Every January, like clockwork, Dry January comes roaring back.

If you want to take a month off drinking, good for you. Truly. Your body, your goals, your choice. No judgment, and it shouldn't be anyone else's business either.

But we also need to stop pretending Dry January is harmless.

For a whole lot of craft breweries, Dry January isn't a "challenge." It's a revenue problem. A jobs problem. A "can we make payroll in February" problem.

Let's start here: nobody owes a brewery a dime. No one is entitled to your bar tab. And if alcohol has ever been a problem for you personally, do what you need to do—period.

But Dry January has become more than a personal choice. It's a cultural movement. And cultural movements have economic consequences.

The reality is that January is already brutal for hospitality. Post-holiday budgets are tight. Weather keeps people home. Events disappear. Then Dry January comes along and supercharges the slump—not just with fewer drinks ordered, but fewer outings, fewer meals, fewer tips, fewer shifts.

It hits the neighborhood brewery sponsoring your kid's team. The bartender paying rent. The server whose income depends on weekend crowds. The distributor reps, designers, canners, and small vendors that keep the entire ecosystem running.

And this on top of the fact that craft brewers have already been hit hard from every direction: higher ingredient and supply costs, staffing and wage pressure, distribution headaches, fierce competition from THC and other alternatives, and shifting post-pandemic consumer habits. Many are already operating on thin margins. January isn't when they make money—it's when they try not to lose too much. Because of Dry January, some simply won't survive until spring patio season.

Want to drink less? Great. Skip weekdays. Have one instead of three. Order food, even if you skip booze. Buy to-go beer for later. Choose NA options (many breweries now offer them). You can make a health decision without turning January into a month-long boycott of local hospitality.

Dry January isn't immoral. But it is bad for business—and pretending otherwise ignores the people and places we claim to support the other 11 months of the year.

If you're looking for the blueprint for how to turn a workplace into a legal catastrophe and land on my Worst Employer list, look no further than Bryant v. C&M Defense Group. A jury just awarded Makita Bryant $5.5 million after what reads less like an HR failure and more like a master class in how to do everything wrong.

What the hell is going on at the Department of Labor?

On January 10, the DOL posted this on X: "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American."

Employers love preliminary injunctions in restrictive covenant cases. And courts are supposed to grant them only in extraordinary circumstances.

The 8th Circuit just reminded everyone what "extraordinary" actually means.

In Choreo, LLC v. Lors, a private-equity-owned financial advisory firm watched its office implode. Four senior advisors resigned and joined a competitor; weeks later eight of the nine remaining advisors followed them. Clients fled. Roughly $400 million in assets under management walked out the door.

Choreo did what employers do in these situations. It sued. It alleged noncompete and nonsolicitation violations, employee raiding, trade secret theft, and tortious interference. The district court responded with a nuclear option—a broad preliminary injunction barring the former advisors from servicing clients, communicating about their new jobs, or recruiting employees, and barring the new firm from basically touching anything related to Choreo.

The 8th Circuit just vacated it all. Why? One word: irreparable harm.

Yes, Choreo lost clients. Yes, it lost goodwill. Yes, its branch was effectively gutted. But none of that, the court held, justified emergency injunctive relief.

Client losses are calculable. This is the financial services industry. Fees are percentage-based. Assets are known. Lost revenues can be estimated and awarded as damages. Calling the harm "goodwill" doesn't magically make it intangible and incalculable.

As to the claim of branch destruction, it came too late. By the time the injunction issued, the damage was already done. Injunctions prevent future harm; they don't rewind the clock.

The court's message was blunt: economic harm—even massive economic harm—is not irreparable if money can fix it. And conclusory declarations saying "this can't be calculated" don't cut it when the numbers are sitting right there in the record.

Just because a preliminary injunction doesn't issue doesn't mean a restrictive covenant is unenforceable. Choreo may still win on the merits. But preliminary injunctions are not automatic in employee-defection cases—far from it. The bar is high. And if you want one, you'd better prove, with clear evidence, that money damages won't do the job.

Filing an EEOC charge doesn't automatically buy an employee job immunity WIRTW #785: the 'sometimes a coffee cup is just a coffee cup' edition 4 solid steps to win your disability discrimination/reasonable accommodation case The law is clear: protect your employees, not a problem customer The question isn't whether your employees are using AI at work (they are), but whether you're prepared for it