"After 9/15/26, The Columbia House will no longer be accepting new orders." So reads the banner atop the mail-order retailer's website.

Reaction no. 1: Columbia House still exists?!?!?! 😮

Reaction no. 2: Wow, that's really sad. 😢

If you're of a certain age (and I am most definitely that age), Columbia House was a rite of musical passage.

For the youngsters… Before Spotify. Before Apple Music. Before you could summon virtually any song ever recorded by tapping a piece of glass in your pocket, there was Columbia House.

And Columbia House had a deal for you.

Pick 8 CDs! Or 10! Or 12! And get them for a penny!

A PENNY! (And let's not forget that pennies don't even exist anymore.)

To a music-obsessed teenager, this seemed like the greatest bargain in the history of capitalism. (The fine print about buying additional albums at full club prices was Future You's problem.)

You'd painstakingly choose your albums, mail the order form, and wait. Then, one glorious afternoon, a cardboard box would arrive containing an instant music collection.

It was magical.

It was also a spectacular business. Columbia Records launched its record club in 1955. By the mid-1990s, Columbia House reportedly had 16 million members and generated as much as $1.4 billion in annual revenue.

Then the internet happened.
Downloading happened.
Streaming happened.

Columbia House ended its music club in 2009, but somehow survived as a niche online seller. On September 15, it will stop accepting new orders after more than 70 years.

There's an obvious business lesson here about technological disruption. But that's not why its closing makes me sad.

Columbia House belonged to an era when music required effort.

You saved money for an album. You went to a record store. You flipped through racks. You studied liner notes. You made mixtapes. You waited for your favorite song to come on the radio so you could record it.

Or you circled 12 tiny album covers on a Columbia House order form and checked the mailbox every afternoon for weeks.

Today, nearly the entire history of recorded music is available on my phone. I'm not going to pretend I'd rather go back to waiting six weeks for a box of CDs to show up in the mail.

But there was something undeniably fun about picking the albums, sending in the card, and waiting for that box to arrive. Then came the real challenge: remembering to send back the "no thanks" card before Columbia House picked your next albums for you.

So, yes, I'm amazed Columbia House was somehow still around in 2026. And I'm sad to see it go. Not because I need somewhere to buy CDs by mail, but because its demise reminds me that I'm old enough to wax nostalgic about a mail-order music club.

Rest in peace, Columbia House. You were the best penny I ever spent.
5th Circuit Rules Employee With 27 Work Deficiencies Still Makes It to Jury — via EntertainHR

Six wage and hour compliance risks employers can't afford to ignore — via Employment & Labor Insider

"I guess ... to a certain point, I've abused that freedom."

Your former employee sues you for discrimination and retaliation.

You respond by … suing her over a laptop.

That's the latest wrinkle in the employment lawsuit between former Fox 2 Detroit anchor Taryn Asher and WJBK-TV. Asher alleges sex discrimination and retaliation. The station denies those allegations and says it terminated her because of unprofessional workplace behavior.

But tucked into the station's response is something else: a counterclaim seeking the return of a company laptop that Asher allegedly kept after her employment ended.

According to the station, it repeatedly asked for the laptop, even sending Asher a prepaid shipping label and box. According to Asher's lawyer, she kept it because it contains information relevant to her lawsuit, and her attorneys tried to negotiate a protocol for returning it while protecting privileged and other information.

I'm not taking sides on who is right about this particular laptop. But the dispute raises an important question for any employer defending an employment lawsuit:

Just because you can countersue a former employee over unreturned company property, does that mean you should?

My answer: only as a last resort.

To be clear, employees should return company property. Laptops, phones, keys, equipment, documents, access cards — if it belongs to the employer, the employer has every right to expect it back.

But filing a counterclaim against an employee who has already sued you for discrimination, harassment, or retaliation carries baggage that another demand letter, phone call, or negotiated return protocol does not.

For starters, you could create another retaliation issue.

Courts have recognized that litigation conduct, including counterclaims, can potentially support a retaliation claim when undertaken with a retaliatory motive and without a legitimate good-faith basis. That doesn't mean an employer forfeits its legal rights merely because an employee sued first. It does mean you should be very comfortable explaining why your counterclaim was necessary.

Then there's the practical issue employers sometimes overlook: What is a jury going to think?

Imagine the case eventually reaches trial. The plaintiff tells jurors that she complained about discrimination, lost her job, sued, and then her former employer sued her right back.

The employer says, "But she had our laptop."

Maybe that explanation is entirely legitimate. Maybe the laptop is valuable, contains sensitive information, and the employee repeatedly refused reasonable requests to return it.

Or maybe a juror thinks: They sued her over a laptop?

I've even had clients suggest getting law enforcement involved when a former employee refuses to return company property.

Think about how that plays to a jury.

The employee says you failed to protect her from discrimination. She complains. She loses her job. She sues. And now you're siccing the police on her over a laptop?

Even if you believe you're technically within your rights, you've just handed the plaintiff's lawyer a potentially powerful piece of the retaliation narrative. Unless you're dealing with something far more serious than an ordinary dispute over the return of company property, calling the police should be an even more remote option than filing a counterclaim.

There are usually better options first. Document your requests for the property's return. Send a prepaid shipping box. Have counsel communicate with the employee's lawyer. If the employee claims the device contains evidence relevant to the lawsuit, negotiate a preservation and return protocol that protects both sides. Involve a neutral forensic vendor if necessary.

Exhaust the reasonable solutions before escalating the dispute.

And if none of that works?

Then, yes, a counterclaim might be appropriate. An employee doesn't earn the right to keep company property simply by filing an employment lawsuit. If the property matters, you've made reasonable efforts to retrieve it, and you have a legitimate, good-faith legal basis for seeking its return, litigation might ultimately be your last available option.

Just make sure it really is the last option.

Because when you're already defending a discrimination or retaliation lawsuit, the last thing you want is for a dispute over a laptop — or, worse, a call to the police — to become Exhibit A in the employee's retaliation story.

We've all had that boss…

The one who's rude. Abrasive. Intimidating. The one who turns every interaction into a stress test.

But being a jerk is not, by itself, illegal.

That's the key lesson from the 3rd Circuit's recent decision in Gabriel v. DSM Biomedical: "Title VII bans discrimination and retaliation, not stressful offices or difficult bosses."

Gabriel, a Black factory manager, claimed DSM's white Head of Safety targeted him because of his race. The executive was, by all accounts, difficult. An internal investigation found him rude and intimidating.

Still, Gabriel lost, because Title VII requires more than proof that your boss is awful. He couldn't show that his race motivated his mistreatment. As the court put it, the Head of Safety was "known as rude and abrasive in general, not just to black workers." An equal-opportunity jerk, in other words.

Gabriel's retaliation claim failed, too. Ten days after he had filed an EEOC charge, DSM suspended him. The timing was suspicious, by the motive was not. During those 10 days, Gabriel sent company leaders a link to a song called "Rat in mi Kitchen" and then a video declaring "war" against people who had been "scheming." Management perceived the messages as threats. That gave DSM a legitimate reason to act.

This case offers businesses two important lessons.

1. Bad management might be awful management, but it isn't necessarily unlawful management. Bullying and abrasive behavior can destroy morale, drive away talent, and create legal risk. Address it. Just don't confuse it with discrimination unless the evidence connects the behavior to a protected characteristic.

2. Protected activity isn't a force field. An employee who files an EEOC charge still has to follow workplace rules. If misconduct follows the complaint, employers can act — provided they can prove they acted because of the misconduct, not because of the complaint.

Sometimes a bad boss is discriminatory.

"[H]opefully a relatively strapping young man."

That's how one manager allegedly described the "ideal person" to replace a female environmental scientist who had just been fired.

That's bad.

What's worse (or fortunate, depending on your perspective) was that the company's AI meeting assistant was still listening.

According to a new sex-discrimination lawsuit against Marathon Engineering, Fireflies recorded the employee's termination meeting — and kept recording after she left. It then allegedly emailed her a link to the transcript, including the post-termination conversation.

That's not an AI hallucination. That's an AI witness.

WIRTW #806 (the 'gen z' edition) If you don't know about prompt injection yet, you need to Your hourly employee's second job is probably none of your business Feeling discriminated against is not the same as being discriminated against A labor union retaliated against its own union employee. The irony writes itself.