"Do not touch my new driver." That's the tagline from a misogynistic ad that Good Good Golf and Callaway Golf posted — and then, only after the backlash, deleted.

Someone pitched the idea of man shoving a woman to the ground and growling that line at her. Someone shot it and edited it. Someone approved it, scheduled it, and posted it to all of the company's channels. And not one person in that chain said, "Wait — this is wrong."

This was a company's male co-founder physically and abhorrently overpowering a female — knocking her to the ground on camera, then standing over her as she looked up at him and he delivered the line like a threat.

That's not a rogue mistake. That's a room with no one there to catch it and call it out.

Good Good was built by a tight-knit group of young men who turned a YouTube golf channel into a $45 million golf apparel and online media company. That's a real accomplishment. It's also, by all public appearances, a leadership bench with very little demographic range — and that's exactly the kind of environment where an ad like this gets made, approved, and shipped without anyone blinking.

DEI critics love to frame diversity as a box-checking exercise, a line item for optics, something HR does to satisfy an audit. It's not. It's a risk-management function, full stop. A workplace that includes different genders, races, and life experiences at the decision-making table has more people positioned to say "this doesn't feel right" before the content goes live — not after Callaway and the PGA Tour are issuing statements putting daylight between themselves and your brand.

A team that's all one demographic doesn't just risk optics problems. It risks blind spots nobody inside the room is positioned to see, because everyone in the room learned to see the world the same way. When every person greenlighting an ad shares the same background, the same sense of humor, and the same instincts about what's "just a bit," you lose your early-warning system entirely. Nobody's left to say the thing that's obvious to everyone watching from the outside: that a man aggressively shoving a woman to the ground on camera isn't edgy content, isn't a harmless bit, isn't something a "welcoming, inclusive" brand should be caught anywhere near. It's just wrong.

This is why DEI matters — not as messaging, not as a mission statement bullet on a careers page, but as an actual, functioning control against exactly this kind of failure.

A diverse leadership team isn't a nice-to-have for your brand or a talking point for your next funding pitch. It's a check on groupthink before groupthink becomes a headline, a sponsor statement, and a case study in what happens when nobody in the building looks, thinks, or lives differently than the guy who came up with the idea.

Good Good and Callaway deleted the ad. It only took a few minutes.

Deleting it doesn't answer the harder question: who was in the room, and why didn't anyone stop it?

Brian Lee says his employer relabeled his ADHD symptoms as "performance deficiencies" and terminated him a result. The employer, Red Hat, says it was simply managing a struggling employee. A federal court is about to sort out who's right.

1. The interactive process is not optional once accommodation is requested. Grant what you can support with evidence; if you deny a request, document why it's not reasonable or why it doesn't address the actual limitation — not just because it's inconvenient.

2. Separate the disability from the deficiency. If an employee's ADHD manifests as missed deadlines or communication gaps, address the underlying limitation through accommodation before you discipline the symptom.

3. Warn before you attach consequences. If a performance rating carries hidden financial teeth — like bonus ineligibility — the employee needs to know that before the rating, not after.

4. PIPs need teeth and clarity. "Immediate and sustained improvement" is a vague standard that plaintiffs' counsel will happily pick apart. Define the metric, not the adjective.

"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.

Horrible bosses aren't necessarily discriminatory bosses When your AI meeting assistant becomes your worst 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