It’s easy to identify someone who has a disability if they’re in a wheel chair or walking around with a seeing eye dog.

But what about a worker who wears a hearing aid or an employee who has epilepsy?

Can a manager fire someone with a hearing aid because they use a hearing aid? Can a boss demote a worker who has an epileptic fit?

Today, the answer is pretty much “yes.”

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act the law is pretty clear on those easy to spot disabilities. You can’t fire someone because they’re blind or unable to walk.

For all those other disabled employees out there who have what seems like less constraining physical issues or for those who are able to deal with their ailments through the use of medicines or prosthetics, for example, they are not typically covered under the ADA.

All that may change soon. The House passed a bill this week that would expand the ADA to cover disabilities that didn’t come under the really disabled umbrella.

This from the Washington Post this week:

WASHINGTON — People who take medicine to control epilepsy, diabetes or cancer or use prosthetic limbs or hearing aids could use the Americans With Disabilities Act to fight workplace discrimination under legislation the House passed Wednesday.

Lawmakers said the Supreme Court has limited the ADA’s reach since it was signed into law by the first President Bush in 1990. “For some the ADA is failing to live up to its promise,” said Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.

The bill, passed 402-17, is designed to bring people back under the ADA’s protection. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Under the ADA today, a disability would have to “substantially” impact a person daily activities. Under the new legislation the wording would be changed to “materially restricts”, opening up the door for many disabled individuals who are challenged by their disability but can do many day-do-day functions we all do.

So what will this mean for the American workforce? Simply, more people will be considered disabled under the ADA.

“This means more employees will be able to ask for an accommodation even when the medication they take or the device they use (such as a hearing aid) makes them fully capable to do their job,” says David Ritter, an expert on employment law and chair of Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s Labor & Employment Group. “Employers will have to grant accommodations and engage in an interactive process with many more employees.”

It’s unfortunate that we need a law to force employers to “engage in an interactive process” with their workers.

“Frankly Eve, I’m worried about your bandwidth.”

This statement came from my editor at MSNBC.com recently. He told me this after I asked him to give me two or three additional assignments each month. With gas and prices for just about everything else so high, I’ve been feeling pressure to make some extra money lately.

When he made his “bandwidth” statement I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?”

He went on to tell me he was worried that maybe I was taking on too much work and didn’t know if I could handle more. With a weekly column and small business blog at MSNBC.com, and all the other freelance work he knows that I do for BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine and New York Times, plus working on a proposal for my next book, he was reluctant to give me more.

I insisted and he eventually relented.

When I got off the phone I thought: “Great. More work.”

But a day or two later I was working on a freelance assignment, and I couldn’t remember where I put a critical report I had printed out just hours earlier. My desk has become a sea of clutter lately and I was pulling my hair out trying to find it. Then I realized I had forgotten to RSVP for a six-year-old pool birthday party that my son Cheiron was invited to. And, even though it was midday, I was yawning so much I had to have a second cup of coffee. (My limit is usually one.)

Just as I was making another cup of Joe I heard the words of my editor: “I’m worried about your bandwidth.” And suddenly that statement became crystal clear in my head.

I was indeed using up my bandwidth, a bandwidth I always thought was limitless.

There are some issues here. I decided to take on more work at a time when I’ve become rather unorganized. I have no real system for tracking my work and my desk looks like a bomb went off. There’s a bag of nuts on my desk from 2004.

Any way, I ‘m getting some help with my desk. I will be writing about this for a MSNBC.com column in two weeks.

As for surpassing my bandwidth reserve, I’m still not sure that’s really happened.

I decided to ask Cali Williams Yost, fellow blogger and founder of Work+Life Fit, and author of “Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You” what the working-to-much warning signs are. Here’s her list:

1. Consistently missing deadlines for priority work.
2. Noticing that you are making more mistakes than usual (we all make mistakes but the rate is higher).
3. You find you don’t have enough time to concentrate, and focus in order to do your job well.
4. You are feeling more tired at the end of the day.
5. This doesn’t seem to be a discrete period of extra work, it seems to have no end.

She also had some interesting insights on what exactly is too much work.

“I find many people still define it as whether or not they are able to get everything done on their ‘to do’ list,” she explains. “I’m not sure how realistic that definition is in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality where emails keep coming in day and night and business is conducted across the global.”

A more “realistic gauge,” she adds, “is whether or not you are able to get the priority tasks and responsibilities done in a quality, non-frantic way. How you know you are taking on too much work is when too many things become a priority and the pace at which you need to work to complete those tasks is unmanageable, exhausting and jeopardizing the quality of the work.”

And I didn’t ask her for tips but thank goodness she offered them anyway:

* Sit down with you manager and team (or with yourself if you are an entrepreneur) and ask for help reprioritizing. I’ve found oftentimes managers and team members are unaware when a colleague’s plate becomes too full. Putting your head-down and just toughing it out no longer works today’s world. You need to say something.
* Rethink your planning and technology management system. Are you letting email and voicemail control you, or are you controlling it so you aren’t distracted and can focus? Are you taking the time either daily or weekly to think about what you need to a want to accomplish at work and in your personal life? Gone are the days when we can just let the day “happen.”

Boy, she’s not kidding.

Are you guys doing too much? Have you checked your bandwidth lately?

Since I wrote my book, “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office”, I’m often asked — What makes successful CEOs and entrepreneurs different from the rest of us?

I’ve already talked a lot about how many of these overachievers were spanked as children. That seemed to get those most interest from the mass media.

But Jennifer Remling wanted to get beyond that. She started a project called “Carve Your Own Road” and has been traveling around the country trying to understand the entrepreneurial spirit. Her book on her journey comes out next year.

She asked me recently to do a webinar for her website, and the main theme was what successful people seem to have in common when it comes to their career approach.

Risk. Risk. Risk. That’s basically the overriding theme I’ve found when interviewing top executives and heavy weight entrepreneurs.

They weren’t afraid to take risks, even though they often had butterflies in their stomachs when it came to making career leaps.

Here’s a link to the webinar

One of the key discussion points was about asking for help. Yes. Many of these successful men and women asked for a lot of help on their climb to the top. The majority talked about the mentors they were lucky enough to be mentored by along the way. And I’m not talking about formalized mentoring programs that are now so prevalent in Corporate America. These were organically grown relationships.

A CEO for a major bank told me she used to pull up her chair to her manager’s desk and watch him work, asking him questions along the way. The CEO of a major retailer told me he stopped his retail idol in a fancy restaurant to introduce himself, and ended up in a long-term mentoring relationship with him.

It’s all about taking risks and learning from people that are smarter than you. Pretty simple.

There are lots of women studying to become doctors. And tons wanting to be lawyers. But, for some reason, women are not breaking down the doors of MBA programs dying to enroll.

Based on recent data, women made up nearly 50 percent of enrollment at law and medical schools, but only 27 percent of the pie in MBA programs.

Now, I want to preface this whole blog post by saying I’m not advocating women run out and get MBAs. I have written in the past about how an MBA isn’t always a guaranteed ticket to career success. But I think it is curious that more women are not pursuing this higher business degree, and in turn not ending up in the upper echelon of the business world, or the corporate world for that matter.

So what the heck is going on? Why aren’t more women pursuing an MBA?

I spoke with Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forté Foundation, a group that promotes MBA and other forms of business education for women, and she had an earful to say about the matter.

“Young women really don’t understand what options there are in business,” she explains. It’s not all about Wall Street, she says, there are tons of options for savvy women who hold an MBA in their hands, everything from working for non profits to entrepreneurship.

The people in women’s “influencer set” - including family, friends, career counselors - tend not to steer females toward business, especially women who are initially all about liberal arts in college.

“For women,” she adds, “there’s a disconnect between the nurture idea and wanting to do something good, and the message they get from business. They see negative imagery out there. They see it as not contributing to society.”

HELLO GALS OUT THERE!!

Is anyone paying attention to the news? There’s a mortgage crisis going on in this country that was perpetuated by people in the business world, Wall Streeters and bankers, and, they were mainly men at the helm of this. I’m not bashing men here, it’s just the reality of who runs these organizations.

Tell me this mortgage mess has not impacted society profoundly.

OK, sorry, got off track a bit. Back to Ellis Sangster.

While she says an MBA or a career in business isn’t all about money, it is also all about money.

And what’s wrong with that? Money isn’t dirty. It can be used for great good if we want it to. But we won’t have any say in it being used for great good if we’re not in the business driver’s seat with men.

How come we think it’s odd for women to want money or to have control over money? This goes to the heart of why women are still making 75 cents on the dollar compared to men and why our numbers are dwindling in the corner office.

Look, an MBA is no guarantee that you’ll make it to the top, and Ellis Sangster agrees with that, but it will give you a boost of confidence in the workplace and it will shut up some of those lunkheads in the business world that already think you have a strike against you because you don’t have a penis.

I don’t want to sound cynical here, but there still is bias in the workplace and every female executive I’ve interviewed has experienced it. When you walk in the door of a new organization or a new division, an MBA will definitely give you that little boost of credibility because naysayers will at least know you committed yourself in some way to the business cause.

To help women think a bit harder about MBAs and business, the Forte Foundation holds forums with successful female MBA holders around the country, and they’ve also started going to campuses to talk to young girls about careers in business.

Parents also need to get involved and talk to their daughters about all types of careers without excluding the potential of a job in business, advises Ellis Sangster.

Interestingly enough, she often gets calls from dads wanting information on how their daughters can pursue an MBA. But the moms never call, she says.

Man, we have a long way to go.

There’s an essay in the New York Times magazine today on how the “New Deal” is never coming back.

The author, a Democrat, puts out a challenge to his party — Come up with a plan to replace the “New Deal”.

The New Deal, which spawned Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a pact between business and government: “Business, you provide a living wage and benefits, and government, you fill in the gaps with programs to help those who fall through the gaps.”

The author, Dalton Conley, puts it more eloquently:

Government and big business had an understanding, famously embodied by the line, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Employers, in turn, agreed to pay their (male) employees a living wage and provide generous benefits. Men, in turn, had an obligation to provide for their dependents. To complete the sequence, the state would step in if any of these links broke down by providing a minimal level of support in the case of unemployment, death, desertion or disability.

Conley makes some good points about providing new systems where people can become part of a pool and buy affordable health insurance, and creating savings incentives.

But alas Conley does not tackle what is probably the biggest problem in our economic structure today, the demise of a living wage.

Wages in this country have been stagnant. Jobs that once paid a good wage, where workers could have a solid middle class life and send their kids to college are disappearing. All the major U.S. automakers are laying off or offering buyouts to huge chucks of their workforces so they can replace them with employees who will work for half the money. And large retailers, such as Circuit City, a recent example, are showing veteran workers the door so they can also fill their jobs with people that will take less.

Last night, I was talking with my neighbor who told us his dad — who without a college education, worked for AT&T as a telephone repair man — and his mom — who was a stay-at-home mom — where able to raise seven kids and provide for them without ever getting help from the government.

Is that possible today?

Paying someone a fair salary will go a long way in providing for the nation’s middle class. We can have endless programs to fill in the gaps, but how will they work if the gaps are like black holes able to consume a whole segment of the population that once hoped it could fend for itself if only they were paid enough.

Workers in the private sector should be crossing their fingers right about now. A bill just passed in the House to give federal employees four weeks off paid when they have a child or adopt.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD), and Tom Davis (R-VA), and it now goes to the Senate where Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), much talked about as a possible running mate for Obama, is sponsoring the bill.

If enacted it could become a template for the nation’s workforce at large.

“The federal government may refer to its leave policies as ‘family-friendly,’ but the reality is that it’s forcing many of its employees to choose between their paycheck and their new child,” says Rep. Maloney. “As the nation’s largest employer, the federal government should be setting a national standard with workplace policies that are truly family-friendly. If President Bush supports family values, he will reevaluate his misguided veto threat of this important legislation.”

I’ve written about the paid family leave debate going on right now in this country. As you can imagine, many businesses are fighting these proposals because they fear it will impact there businesses negatively.

I’m admittedly torn about this issue. Paid leave would be a great benefit for workers who are struggling to care for family and stay productive at work. But businesses, small firms in particular, could find themselves short handed when workers take advantage of what could be a future perk. I write about this conflict today in my MSNBC.com smallbiz blog.

Unfortunately, the realities of life come and bite us on the ass too often. Where family is concerned, we have to give all our priorities. I’m not talking about being there for a soccer game, or having tea with a parent. I’m talking about needing time to care for a loved one who’s sick, or who has just come into the world.

Too many workers don’t have the luxury of taking time off unpaid, or quitting their jobs to become stay-at-home parents. Some workers would face financial ruin at a time when they need to be strong and help a family member.

I reprimanded my six-year-old son this morning because he did not flush the toilet.

The way I see it, this is one of the many building blocks I am giving him so he can go out and be a productive citizen some day.

“Flush the toilet.” “Don’t hit your sister with a Hot Wheel.” “Don’t lie.” “Don’t steal.” “Don’t send incriminating emails that could someday come back to haunt you.”

So what the heck did the parents of Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi teach them?

Tannin and Cioffi are two former hedge-fund managers for Bear Stearns were arrested today. Supposedly, these two men knew their fund was “toast” but they still painted a rosy picture of the funds to investors. Investors ended up losing $1.6 billion.

Here are photos of Tannin and Cioffi:

It’s not a new story. This type of scam has happened at other firms. We all remember Enron. Executives saying everything is okay when clearly everything is not.

This morning, disgusted with yet another one of these situations, I look back and wonder, how were these men raised? My mom would say, “they were raised by wolves.”

Since we know that’s not the case, I figured I’d ask an ethics expert on whether these acts point to something amiss in a person’s upbringing.

Am I nuts to even consider this?

“No,” James Otteson, professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva College in New York, assures me.

Children, he says, need to develop a “deep sense of how their actions affect other people.”

This is not natural for human beings, he explains, so parents have to keep drumming this into their kids’ head, making it a habit to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, along the lines of, “What does Johnny think when you do that?” “Imagine what Johnny would feel.”

Without this basic empathy building block, it’s easy for individuals to do bad things without thinking about how their actions will impact others.

When you combine this attitude with the general predatory environment in certain areas of the business world today, he says, you have a lethal combination.

These hedge fund managers and corporate executives are dealing with ridiculous amounts of money, so they may begin to see investors as “tools, or pieces on a chess board they’re just moving around.”

We need to all get in the habit of thinking every day how our actions trickle down. Remember the circle of yelling theory? When you yell the people you yell at end up yelling, and so on and so on and so on.

The alleged actions of Tannin and Cioffi may have indirectly hurt thousands of individuals who lost lots of money and are now struggling to keep their homes, their lifestyles.

They were also stupid, it seems. The two guys actually corresponded via email about how the fund was in crummy shape several days before they told investors they were “quite comfortable” with the fund’s stability.

What were they thinking?

For a moment I started thinking we should all be more philosophical every day.

But then I started researching Tannin and Cioffi’s background and found out that Tannin actually had this foundation.

He was a Preston Warren scholar in philosophy at Bucknell University many years ago before heading for Wall Street.

I’m not kidding folks.

Here’s a definition of the prize from the University’s website:

The W. Preston Warren Prize, endowed by friends in honor of Professor Warren, for 26 years a distinguished professor of philosophy at Bucknell, is awarded to that senior majoring in philosophy who shows the greatest achievement and promise in philosophy.

Unfortunately, it appears it was all promise and no achievement for Tannin.

I guess he never learned early on to flush the toilet.

I wonder if Ed McMahon asked American Family Publishers for an advance on his pitchman pay. He’s been fighting foreclosure on his mansion in Beverly Hills.

You guys might think I’m crazy even suggesting he ask his employer for financial help but maybe I’m not that wacky.

Turns out some employers are actually helping their financially strapped workers. There was a great story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that talks about how some companies are offering financial aid to employees who face foreclosure and a host of other financial problems.

At a time when corporate boards are paying out big bucks to dead CEOs, it’s nice to hear the working stiffs are being given a helping hand now and then:

In the wake of the mortgage crisis, a small but growing number of workers are getting help avoiding or coping with foreclosure from an unlikely source: their employers. So far, a handful of companies — from small manufacturers to large companies like home-financing behemoth Fannie Mae — are offering assistance, such as interest-free loans, grants and support in securing rental properties. They’re also beefing up their employee-assistance programs, or EAPs, and adding more educational seminars on personal finance.

A January survey of 329 human-resource professionals showed that in 2007, 20% of employers said they received more requests from workers for pay advances than the year before, reports from the Society of Human Resource Management. Thirty-nine percent of respondents also saw an uptick in withdrawals from retirement savings — widely seen as an indicator of financial woes.

Folks, what do you have to lose. Check out what your company has to offer. Many firms have always offered a host of services through EAPs that range from emotional help to credit counseling. It has always perplexed me that many employees never take advantage of such services. These programs are there for workers. Your employer counts the money laid out for such offerings as part of your compensation people.

And I’ve written recently on how many bosses are more open to allowing their workers to telecommute because of skyrocketing gas prices.

Obviously, you can pull money out of your retirement fund, and some employers are offering hardship withdrawals as an option. But most financial planning experts say this can come back to haunt you in the long run. It’s for retirement stupid!

My husband and I tapped into a 401K many years ago to help pay for a home and when he left that employer we got nailed with a huge tax bill and unreal penalties. It wasn’t worth it in hindsight.

Asking for a raise is probably a smarter idea.

I know, I know, it’s a tough economy and many employers are putting the clamp down on increases. But that’s what every employee thinks, so they may not be pressuring their managers for a pay hike, opening up the door for you. Supervisors usually have a pool of money they can divvy up among workers, and the managers I’ve talked to all say “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

So start squeaking people.

I’m not naive here. I know there will be lots of supervisors who couldn’t care less if you’re struggling to keep your home, or fighting off personal bankruptcy. But before you go groveling to a rich sibling, or generous friend, check out what your company has to offer.

“I was not going to stay at a job and be miserable. Everyone around me would have been miserable too.”

That statement came from Lorna Francis, a former colleague and good friend. Many moons ago we worked together in Manhattan at a fashion publication called Footwear News. (Yes, we all had to pay our dues folks.)

I recently asked her about her decision to get the hell out of journalism and pursue her passions — food and entertaining. I wanted to know how she was able to leave a long-time career and embark on something totally new with no guarantees she’d be able to ever make a living.

So many readers tell me about what their dream jobs would be, but few have the guts to go for it.

Lorna’s “miserable” comment goes to the very heart of this.

I believe she would have made her co-workers and bosses miserable if she stayed in a gig she didn’t love. Lorna has always worn her heart on her sleeve. She’s brutally honest and will tell you to your face what’s wrong with you. That’s what I love about her.

Maybe this attitude is what gave her the strength to make a major change mid career.

Is there a personality type of someone that can successfully shift career gears?

There are two top types, says Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success.

There are the “I-do-what-I want” career changer and the “I-have-no-other-choice” career changer, she explains.

Alboher, who also writes the Shifting Careers blog at the New York Times, says Lorna sounds like the kind of person who doesn’t care what other people think, and that makes her a prime candidate for someone who can shift careers easily. Most people are worried what their spouses, parents, friends will think and have difficulty following their work bliss.

The other big category of career changers, she says, are those who are pushed into making a change.

“It doesn’t feel like a choice,” she adds, “but these people make a change because they are laid off, scared or just tired and they’re pushed to a place where they say, ‘what do I have to lose?’”

Lorna left the shoe publication to go into television in the 1990s. I thought she was nuts back then but she saw herself as a TV producer. Well, she took a cut in pay and went off to become a successful producer in cities from Florida to Alabama, and ended up producing for a Houston station.

One day, in 2003, she realized she was numb to the world of news because of all the rapes and murders she was writing about, and on that day began her quest for a new career.

She enrolled in culinary school in Houston for an 18-month program and quit her job at the TV station. To make ends meet she took jobs at retailers like Ann Taylor and Pier One, and the jobs were anything but easy.

“At one point I felt embarrassed working in retail because people treat you differently. They act like they’re better than you,” she explains.

But she persevered even as she struggled financially.

When she graduated she landed a job as catering coordinator for Perry’s Restaurant Group in Houston, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sound happier.

I just recently received an email from her that shows how proud she is of her new career.

During a recent high-end party she helped organize, she did such an incredible job that the D.J. who was also hired for the gig sent a letter to her manager about what a great job she and her team did.

While it was normal to get a letter from the people that hire Perry’s it was unusual for a vendor to praise the staff:

Special kudos go to Lorna! She is a wonderful asset to your catering team! Everything ran smoothly due in large part to her leadership and direction! She is a wonderful person!

Lorna was so proud of this letter she wanted to share it with her friends, and it proves that you can survive and thrive when you finally decide to make a major career change.

“I am a firm believer that if you are passionate about something, you should take the leap of faith,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with taking it, and failing, but there’s something wrong with not taking it at all, and regretting it later.”

See how happy she looks:

When I get to my desk every morning, I pull up an array of sites. I go to CareerDiva first, of course; then I log onto my Gmail account, my Hotmail account, my YouBiz blog on MSNBC, and I also log into my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.

As you can imagine, I get a host of emails and messages that are work related and often address pretty serious issues. But this morning I got a message from my 12-year-old nephew Grant. He sent me a greeting card via Facebook.

It looks like the kitten is drunk and the message on the photo says: “Iz no drunk. Now givz me the keys.”

I called him and asked him why he sent it to me. He said, “I don’t know.”

I said, “What do you mean, you don’t know?” He then said, “I was trying to send something else and that one came through. I don’t know what happened.”

I wondered what he intended on sending me. He said, “It was a picture of a cartoon character saying, ‘Respect my authority.’” He added, “do you know South Park? It was Cartman.”

OK, I’m not totally an old fart. “I know Cartman,” I replied, a little miffed.

So why was he sending me this silly message? Grant, a pre-teenager, doesn’t think of social networking sites as a tool to get you ahead in your career.

“I think Facebook is for talking to your friends. It’s pretty fun. You can play games and stuff,” he says.

When I got his drunk cat message this morning, I cringed a bit. My column today on MSNBC.com is about how older workers have a tough time getting another job when they’re laid off, and a big chunk of the advice I offered these employees was to get on social networking sites.

But often job seekers, especially older ones, tell me they just don’t feel comfortable joining these groups. They see them as a haven for young kids who want to talk about hooking up and the latest cyber game.

Grant’s drunk cat lent a bit of credence to their claims.

I admit, there’s a lot of silliness on many of these sites, but don’t throw out the kitten with the spiked bath water.

You can obviously create a network of friends to help you in your job search, but you can also join different networking groups that are specific to your interests. I recently was asked to join a job-searching group on Facebook and it’s jam packed with helpful information.

And at my LinkedIn account I can actually see who’s looking at my profile. This is particularly handy for me when I want to know where I might get the most positive feedback when I pitch a story idea.

Anyway, among the silliness there is substance.

And, honestly, I love that I can hear from my nephew and find out what’s going on in his life. Ten years ago, do you think a 12 year old would have picked up the phone to call his aunt?

Thank you Internet.