The best excuse for a dead career is your kids, right? Most people give you a pass when you point to the trials and tribulations of motherhood as the reason you didn’t make it as a banker, artist, or entrepreneur.

It’s a cop out, and often a fallback for women who weren’t really happy with their career paths. Well, the thousands of successful women I’ve interviewed may have wanted to play the blame game when things got tough, but somehow they rose above it.

You can raise the volume up on your career to levels beyond your wildest dreams.

I recently was asked to come up with some tips to help moms from career crashing for a magazine. The story fell through but I thought I would share some of the key points and get your feedback.

* Prepare for a battle to rival the Spartans in 300: I almost crashed and burned when my daughter was hitting the terrible twos. I was fighting to build my career and she was fighting to destroy me. This is the fight or flight crossroads many women hit in their mid- to-late-30s, according to the Center for Work Life Policy. One study the group conducted of women in the science, engineering and technology fields found that over time 52 percent of highly qualified women quit their jobs.

* Purge your life of perpetual mommyness: Break up with your stay-at-home mom friends and others who try to sabotage you, and never go to a play date again. No matter what anyone says, moms who have careers or lives beyond just kids and hubby have a better chance at happiness and you’ll lose sight of that if you try to maintain your pre-job mommy lifestyle. A recent UK study that looked at 4,000 couples found that working moms were happier than their non-working counterparts.

* Pretend you’re not a mommy at work: I remember listening to Jack Welch give a speech at the Massachusetts Women’s Conference and he told the women one thing that left them all with their mouths hanging open. “If you want to get ahead, it isn’t about saying ‘hi’ to your boss, it’s about over-delivering,” he says. “That is the game. When you learn that game that will do more for you than anything else you can do.” No one wants to hear about your kids sickness, or the play you missed, especially not your boss. My editors have been great, understanding men and women but bottom line they really don’t care why I couldn’t deliver my work on time. The main thing is I didn’t deliver. I’m not saying you have to take down those adorable photos of little Cheiron, just don’t whine about being a mom all the time. (I know you know what I mean.)

* Divorce the slacker: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it one thousand times – if it weren’t for my husband my career would never have made it to the level it is now. When I was writing my book there were many nights when I was trapped in my office hearing my husband prepare dinner, do homework with the kids and then start the laundry. One study asked women in medicine how they were able to balance medicine, motherhood and madness. Who better to ask about dealing with a hectic career and motherhood than women physicians. Well, one of their big tips: pick your partner well.

* Put down the blocks and get off the floor: I don’t think I remember my mother ever getting on the floor with me to play a game, or sitting with me in my room at a table drinking pretend tea at a pretend party. I, on the other hand, can’t seem to get out of playing Hullaballoo…and I have a bad back. We’ve lost our minds when it comes to thinking we have to spend every waking moment with our kids. A study by the University of Maryland found that moms today spent four hours more a week with the little buggers than our moms did in the sixties.

I know some of you out there have divergent views on this, and I’d love to hear your take. No way around it, women still face discrimination in the workplace, and that continues to keep many from moving up. But women who constantly find themselves fighting an uphill battle when it comes to building their careers also have to take a long hard look at themselves and how they can change things.

I recently bought a bunch of frozen, all-natural quiches I plan on serving the family with a salad just to make my dinner life a bit easier.

When a car bomb was detonated around noon on Feb. 26, 1993 at the North Tower of the World Trade Center I was a reporter for United Press International in New York.

My editor sent a few of us to the scene to get some input from eyewitnesses and I remember it took me over an hour to get downtown. By the time I arrived it was nearly 3 p.m. and soot-covered office workers were still slowly flowing out of the building. Employees talked about the endless stairs and the orderly way people exited the building.

I remembered this scene when I was watching TV in Tampa, where we had relocated to, on Sept. 11, 2001 when I watched the first World Trade Center tower collapse. I collapsed into my seat, realizing that so many people were probably still trapped on the building’s higher floors, or still slowly, orderly walking down the endless steps.

None of the workers that got up that morning had any inkling what was in store for them. They were thinking about how much they hated, or loved their jobs as they commuted in that day, or they weren’t thinking about work at all — maybe meeting a friend for cocktails after work, or their kids ball game that weekend.

I know of one guy who died in one of the towers, never even having time to call his wife. Word was, he hated the financial job he had there but stayed with it for the money. Just one more year and they’d have the money they needed to live a better life.

Unfortunately the years ran out.

There was a feeling in the air after 9/11 that people would not continue to live their lives the way they were. So many of us were going to scale back, focus on what’s important and do good for the world. While some people kept this feeling alive, most of us allowed the daily grind of life to consume us yet again. We still kept buying McMansions, we still kept pinning all our hopes on Wall Street, we still kept turning a blind eye to unethical behaviors, and for our efforts we ended up with an economic collapse.

Just a thought on this important day when two buildings collapsed and thousands lost their lives.

Will today be just another day at work for you?

People who write about careers and workplace issues typically don’t say this out loud — Sometimes you can’t find a job.

No matter how much advice on resume writing, interviewing and networking you devour, you may still hit a no-job wall. It may be a function of where you live, or the companies you’re applying to, or your skills. But bottom line, some of you won’t be able to land a gig, maybe for months.

The reality is there just aren’t as many jobs to be had. Yesterday the Department of Labor released some disturbing figures on job opening. In July, the number of job openings in the country hit a record low of 2.4 million openings.

So here’s how it breaks down. There are nearly 15 million unemployed people in the United States and about 2.4 million openings.

Not great odds no matter how you slice it.

I’m not telling you this so you can sit back and say, “oh, I knew it. I’m going to give up.”

That’s just stupid talk. (I wrote about many of you giving up in my MSNBC.com column this week.)

I’m telling you this because many of you are angry that you’re not getting interviews, or even calls or emails back from employers. You’re doing everything career experts suggest but it’s just not turning up any results.

Well, it’s damn hard to find a great job right now.

And I don’t blame you for being mad.

This comment from Bill to my column this week summed up the frustration out there:

Again, ADVICE from an ill-equipped writer that falls far short of giving any real advice. “Don’t give up”, “Change tactics” and “Network with friends and acquaintances” these are the same recommendations given when unemployment rates were at 3%. Until the country starts making jobs for those of us that are out of work, we will remain out of work. We didn’t loose our jobs due to any fault on our part and all our efforts of “not giving up” or “changing tactics” will not lower unemployment.

I don’t appreciate being called an ill-equipped writer but he’s right about the same old advice. The career experts I quote in my piece are not coming up with ground-breaking advice folks.

As far as I know, no career advisers or coaches have come up with anything new such as hypnotizing hiring managers or storming the doors of an employer with an Uzi. Now these are innovative ideas. (Just kidding.)

The advice you hear from these folks should be based on their years of experience and the tactics they saw work. OK, they’re not the Dalai Lama, but they can provide some teachable moments or remind us of tried-and-true ways to help enhance our job search.

I stress, however, that that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a job.

You have to commit yourself to the search and do everything you can to boost your image and your skills. But in the end, it’s still a game of chance.

You might expect the suicide rate among the unemployed to be rising in this economy, but among those of us who are gainfully employed?

Turns out workplace suicides hit their highest level since the government started tracking the numbers, and the data doesn’t bode well for what may be happening among the population at large.

Workplace suicides jumped 28 percent to 251 cases in 2008, up from 196 in the previous year, according to the Department of Labor.

“A tough economic situation tends to be an equal opportunity downer,” said Thierry Guedj, the BostonJobDoctor founder and psychology of work expert and professor at Boston University.

“What you see is that many employers are trying to do a whole lot more with less. Many employees are being pushed to the limit by their supervisors, where they cannot possibly meet the productivity targets,” he explained. “So, basically they work themselves into the ground. Tremendous anxiety sets in. Insomnia creeps up. People are in a constant state of hyper-alertness, which is very bad for their health. There’s also a rise in heart attacks and other serious medical conditions.”

According to the DOL nearly 95 percent of the suicides were committed by men, and the highest levels were among those who were between 45 and 54.

When it comes to different age groups and suicide, said Eric Caine, professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, pointed out, the rate tends to accelerate among those in their early 20s and then tends to level off among those in their early 50s and goes down a bit from there. The fact that so many of the people tracked in this research were around 50 years old may just be a reflection of the size of that group among the working population, he added.

Factors that contribute to suicide among those between 25 to 55, he explained, typically have to do with family stress, financial stress and workplace stress.

To be sure, stress on the job is rising for many workers in this economy as companies cut back benefits, furlough workers, and expect a few to do the job of many.

“Compounding the problem,” added Guedj, “is the huge debt load that Americans have accumulated. So, many people are facing foreclosure. Others can’t pay for their kids’ education. They feel like they habe failed on so many fronts. Despair starts to set in and the world looks like a huge black hole from which it seems impossible to escape.”

Among those who committed suicide guns were increasingly the weapon of choice:

For suicides in 2008, gunshot wounds (accounting for 130 suicides) and asphyxiations/strangulations or suffocations (accounting for 78 suicides) were the most common occurrences. Gunshot wounds increased 48 percent from 2007 to 2008.

And it wasn’t just rank and file workers that took their own lives. In fact, managers were more likely to kill themselves. (Here’s a link to a blog post I wrote on a recent executive suicide.)

Workers in management occupations account for the largest group of suicides, the DOL reporterd. In 2008 they accounted for 14 percent of suicides (34 fatalities) and in 2007 they accounted for 18 percent of all suicides (35 fatalities). Transportation and material moving occupations, sales and related occupations, and protective service occupations each accounted for 10 percent of total suicides. The occupations that experienced the largest increases in suicides from 2007 to 2008 were protective service occupations (14 to 25 fatalities) and transportation and material moving occupations (13 to 24 fatalities). About a third of the total protective service suicides in 2008 were police officers.

This blog post is fitting right now because this week is National Suicide Prevention Week, according to Clare Miller, director of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health American Psychiatric Foundation.

We need to be aware of how these times impact us and the people around us. Overall suicide statistics for the nation are woefully slow, and only go back to 2006, said Caine, before the economic hit the skids.

Some mental health experts are bracing for what could be a significant increase given economic conditions. “We know with clarity that in Asia when the economy unraveled in 1997 and 1998 the rate in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan went up dramatically,” he said. Since Japan is quicker to track suicide data, he pointed to that nation’s numbers for 2008, which shows the rate rising.

The labor department numbers may also be an ominous sign of what’s happening right now.

Employers are concerned.

This from a Workforce Management story from last week:

Employers are expressing increasing worry about employee suicide, say employee assistance plan providers.

There have been a greater number of calls recently from employers about how to handle potential suicides, said Dr. Doug Nemecek, Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based senior medical director for Cigna Corp.’s Health Solutions organization, which includes its behavioral health and EAP business.

In some cases, employees are informing managers about co-workers who have expressed suicidal thoughts on their Facebook pages, he said.

Given the potential problem, Caine had some simple pieces of advice for people going through bad times —

*Strong people can ask for help. Some problems can’t be solved alone.
*Many people around us have ideas we haven’t thought of, and many people have gone through this before and have been able to come out of it.
*There are hotlines in many communities and thoughtful, caring people.
*There is a light at the end of the tunnel — take it on faith.

There is one thing that keeps managers from totally tearing apart former employees — fear of lawsuits.

Alas, this all may change.

If you’re interviewing for a new job and your prospective employer wants to contact your former employers they can and often do, even if you don’t list them as one of your references. Maybe you weren’t on great terms with the manager you worked for before you departed your old gig, or you screwed up on a big project, or the company bosses were all just plain wacko, and the last thing you want is a hiring manager considering you for a job calling one of these people.

Well, often times these old managers just provide name, rank and serial number. They’re afraid to say anything beyond confirming the fact that you worked there; and often times they’ll just direct the person to human resources. These managers are trained to do this by their companies. Why? If they dog you to a hiring manager and you don’t get the job and you find out about it, you can go back and sue that person and the company for libel — basically, that they were bad-mouthing you unjustly.

So, the fear of lawsuit seems to keep some old bosses from blathering.

Turns out, in this tight labor market, companies are getting around this fear.

Employers are having potential employees sign away their rights to sue their ex-bosses if they say something negative about you.

I’m not kidding folks, a job seeker from Queens named Bob noticed a new pattern on many of the applications he was asked to sign, a libel waiver.

Here’s an example of what he’s been seeing:

I authorize and request my educational institutions and present*/former employers and those individuals whom I have listed as references to furnish the General Board of Global Ministries information about my work performance, ability, and other qualities relevant to my qualifications for employment. In so doing, I release them from any and all liability or damages of whatever nature arising from furnishing the requested information.

When I saw this I was shocked and quickly called a few employment experts to find out what was up. Almost everyone I spoke with was unfamiliar with the practice but few were surprised employers were asking job applicants to sign their rights to sue away.

“Sadly, the use if waivers speaks to the great divide between employers and employees,” said Barbara Poole, president of career and human resources site Employaid.com.

“The waivers mirror the constriction of available jobs in this economy. In the same sense that real estate value is based on scarcity, the more desirable the job, the more applicants, and the higher the stakes are for getting that job,” she continued. “Employees come into the interview armed for bear, so to speak, after being let go at their last place of employment. The rise in wrongful termination and benefits suits have risen, and it is this same spirit that is driving the need for waivers by the employer. It speaks to the need for interviewing by the book, without even a smidge of an illegal question, regard to age, or other EEOC violations.”

Alas, such waivers are indeed legal, said Hanan Kolko, an attorney representing workers.

But he cautioned against signing any broadly written waivers that take away your rights to sue for other circumstances.

You can, of course, refuse to sign any such waiver, Kolko added, but “if you want the job badly enough you’re in a jam.”

Bob decided to cross out the part about signing over his rights to sue his former employer and then completing the application. It’s unclear what impact that decision had on his chances, but he ended up not landing the gig.

Bottom line, you have to weigh how important a position is and whether you want a job that asks you to compromise your integrity.

I was reading Twitter tweets this morning and I came across one that directed me to a story about the “Ten Characteristics of Great Companies” by a venture capital investor in Hoboken, N.J., named Fred Wilson. It was a solid list of virtues that make for solid companies, everything from “constantly innovating” to “having a global mindset.”

But there was one key point missing — treat your workers well.

I don’t think that’s a lot to ask, and it is surely a big part of what makes a company great.

I’m thinking about this today because I just got a disturbing study by labor market experts in academia called “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers” on how poorly some firms treat their workers, so my radar antenna was up this morning.

What they uncovered is alarming:

· Minimum wage: 1 in 4 workers (26%) was paid below the minimum wage in a given work week;
· Overtime pay: 76% of those who worked overtime were not paid the required time and a half;
· Meal breaks: More than two-thirds (69%) did not get meal breaks they were entitled to;
· Off-the-clock work: 70% did not get any pay at all for work performed outside their regular shift;
· Tipped pay: Nearly 1/3 (30%) of tipped workers were not paid the tipped worker minimum wage;
· Pay documentation: 57% of workers did not receive mandatory pay stubs;
· Employer retaliation: 43% experienced illegal retaliation following complaints;
· Workers’ compensation: Only 6% of injured workers received coverage for medical expenses;
· Exempt workers: 89% of “in-home” child care workers earned less than the minimum wage

“This report exposes a world of work in which the core protections that many Americans take for granted are failing significant numbers of workers,” said Nik Theodore, Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a co-author of the report. “The sheer breadth of the problem suggests the country’s work laws are simply not adequate for the 21st century, and that the laws we do have are not being adequately enforced.”

This isn’t just about low-wage earners folks. During this economic downturn, employers have been squeezing employees at all levels hard and that has led to, among other things, illegal furloughs, and many of you working off the clock. And who takes lunch anymore?

The findings in this study — that included interviews with nearly 4,500 workers in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles — just expose in ugly detail how bad things have gotten. It’s a condemnation of the labor laws and enforcement in this country, and a hopefully a wake-up call for a governmental system that has let so many workers down in the last two decades.

But it’s also a condemnation of what we all have come to expect from so-called great companies.

Every conversation should include a discussion of how employees in offices or factories or hotels should and should not be treated. Employees are not just superfluous “resources”. (My husband always talks about he hates the phrase “human resources” and I’m starting to get his point.)

“These problems are not limited to underground employers or a single group of vulnerable workers – rather, these violations are occurring at large and small businesses alike, in industries that are at the very core of urban U.S. economies. In fact, we found that it’s where you work, not who you are, that is the main determinant of these violations of employment laws,” said Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, also a co-author.

Clearly, not all employers screw workers in this way, and the authors of the study point that out. But, added co-author Ruth Milkman, a professor of Sociology at UCLA, “systematic business strategies are in play when you see violations on this magnitude, which involve explicit decisions made by employers.”

Illegal and stupid decisions, no? It’s amazing to me that with all this talk about “great” — “Great Companies”, “Good to Great“, “What Really Makes A Great Entrepreneur?” — we haven’t really figured out what that means yet.

There are tools I use that just make my work life easier and today I’ve decided to share two of my favorites. Twitter and Skype.

Technology is moving so fast today it’s hard to know what you should be paying attention to or not. It’s true, Twitter may be a flash in the pan, and Skype may start charging for its basic service, but for now you’re not being smart if you just disregard these free tools that may make your life easier and maybe even enhance your career.

Here goes:

TWITTER

OK, you’ve all heard about this but many of you are wondering what the heck it really is and why you should even care. Even some of you I’ve encouraged to get on Twitter don’t even know what it is or what all the fuss is about.

What: It’s like a mini blog that is perpetually updated; but not updated by just one blogger. The millions of people on Twitter update this public blog with small notes of 140 characters or less called “tweets”. And all bets are off when it comes to what the tiny messages can be about, everything from events in Gaza to chicken livers. The messages scroll down your screen every time you refresh the page, and you can also see if anyone has responded to your tweet by clicking on your user name.

Why: Twitter is basically about exposure folks, plain and simple. If you want to create a following or get people all around the world to offer advice or connect you with their networks, Twitter is for you. I use it to provide tips to workers on everything from COBRA insurance to their rights when furloughed; to get readers to read my blog and my MSNBC.com column; to network with other career and business experts; and to help readers who are looking for work or contacts in a certain city. I also enjoy funny and witty tweets from a host of Twitterati, and I sometimes share my own personal stories. Once my niece was arguing with her mom about getting a lip ring and I put a tweet out for advice and we were inundated with tons of good suggestions. Twitter is a great place to sell your wares as well. I’ve found a ton of jewelry designers on Twitter because they tweeted something interesting about their designs.

How: To sign up you go to www.twitter.com and click on “sign up now”. The rest is pretty self explanatory. The user name is key when you decide to get on Twitter. Pick something simple and easy to remember. Use your name if that’s short and sweet. I chose CareerDiva and it’s working for me.

A couple of Twitter no nos, and take this with a grain of salt because in reality there are no Twitter no nos. We’re all pretty much making this stuff up on the fly. The big no no for me is signing up for Twitter and never tweeting. I get people following me all the time, then I look at there Twitter page and I realize they don’t have even one tweet to their name. I typically decide not to follow someone like that.

And what’s “follow” mean anyway? Well, the way Twitter works is you follow people you know, or just think they have great tweets. If you follow them, often times they’ll follow you. It’s all about followers on Twitter. I have over 4,000 right now and I follow more than 3,000 people. This may be a lot for many of you to track, and when you get into the big numbers like that you will definitely miss out on tweets because you’d have to be monitoring the site 24/7 to get it all. Once a tweet comes up and you miss it, you won’t typically see it again, unless you go searching for it, or have a certain person as your favorite.

On Fridays lots of people on Twitter suggest other people on Twitter to follow, so it’s a good time to check out people you may never have come across.

I know you all probably will have tons of questions once you try Twitter out so feel free to ask me on Twitter. www.Twitter.com/careerdiva. Don’t be afraid to try things out. I was a Twitter dummy — and probably still am — for the first few months.

SKYPE

This is one of the free services that you should be ashamed of yourself for not using.

What: Skype is a service that allows you to make voice and video calls over the Internet for free. That’s basically what it is. eBay bought the company but this week announced it sold off a big chunk of the company to private investors, a move that will potentially make the service even better, experts say.

Why: I have two reasons for using Skype.
1. To connect with my husband and kids when I travel. I was in Athens, Greece, last week and all I needed was a connection to the Internet to do video-chatting with my family back home in the good old USA. It didn’t cost me a dime, and it was like I was there in the room watching my kids dance around our home office.
2. To connect with far-flung friends and sources. It’s great to send email and talk on the phone but watching someone is totally another matter. You really feel like you spent some time with people, and you can also put a name with a face. (Also, lately people asking to interview me are looking to do video podcasts and one recently asked me if I was on Skype because he used the free service to interview sources.)

How: Go to the site and download the software. Again, pick an easy to remember user name. I’m, what else, CareerDiva. To make this worth your while you’re going to have to get other people to sign up for Skype, although, you may be surprised how many people you know are on there. Many people are including their Skype user names in their signature lines these days in addition to their cell phone numbers and email addresses.

I typically take my laptop on business trips so I’m able to spark up Skype in a hotel room and leave it running most of the time I’m there so I can feel like I’m just in the other room listening to my kids, or my husband typing on his computer or fixing dinner.

A friend of mine wrote me yesterday that he wasn’t on Twitter because he was just “traditional.” Well, he didn’t write me this thought in a letter on stationary that came through the mail folks. He was instant messaging me this proclamation.

So, in his world IM is traditional but Twitter is some scary unknown.

“What a world, what a world.”

Remember that quote from the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy throws water on her and she starts to melt:

You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I’m going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!

IM, Twitter, Skype. They’re all like technological water and I’m here to throw it on you. I promise, you won’t melt.

When I was a teenager working my first job at the Cake Box bakery in Queens, N.Y., my dad used to peek through the store window to make sure I was okay. I never let on that I saw him. He wanted me to be independent but just had trouble letting go.

Turns out my dad may have had the right idea, according to a government lawyer who just settled a rape case involving two teenage Taco Bell employees in Memphis, TN, who were molested by the store manager.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced yesterday that Taco Bell Corp. agreed to pay $350,000 in damages to two girls who suffered the most egregious type of sexual harassment at the hands of their boss, one at the store and the other at her home.

The EEOC attorney William Cash who worked on the case is still sickened by the events the agency uncovered that involved two young kids doing the responsible thing, working at their first jobs.

Terence Davis, the manager/rapist, who is now in jail serving two concurrent eight-year terms, raped the first employee at her home in 2005 after going to her house on the guise that he wanted to drop off her pay check and then forcing his way in, Cash explained. And the other teen was raped five months later, in April 2006, on her first day on the job when Davis followed her into a store cooler.

At first, Cash said, the EEOC was only aware of the second girl’s rape, but during the investigation discovered that another girl had also been raped by the same manager.

“We had information that a female assistant manager was aware in March of 2006 that the first rape had occurred,” Cash explained. “She didn’t take any precautions to protect other girls.”

Taco Bell, the company, he added, bears responsibility for how things turned out. “This is a business that makes their money off of teenagers paid minimum wage. They didn’t take appropriate precautions,” he stressed. “What you would hope is companies, through recruiting, hiring and training of people take appropriate steps to make sure people they put in place hiring 16 year-olds would not engage in this type of conduct.”

I called Taco Bell and I was emailed a statement from a spokesman Rob Poetsch regarding the case:

“The health and safety of our employees and customers is our top priority, and we have zero tolerance for workplace harassment of any kind. As soon as we learned of these allegations, we took immediate action and terminated the employment of the person in question. While we are outraged that this situation occurred, we are committed to maintaining a workplace free from harassment in all of our restaurants.”

This situation is particularly disturbing for me because I’ve written a lot about how important it is for teenagers to work real jobs not just concentrate on school work. Many studies show a job helps teenagers build confidence and responsibility.

I still believe that, and want my kids to work when they hit their teens. But, when I heard about this case it made me realize we can’t just throw kids out into the real world without some guidance.

Grown women and even men still grapple with sexual harassment in the workplace, so it’s being naive to think our kids won’t ever fall victim to that.

The EEOC’s Cash said parents should be vigilant when they send kids out on their first gigs.

“I think parents should meet the manager, or the person supervising their child,” he advised, adding that a good company and good employer would understand a mom or dad wanting to make sure their teen is in a safe environment.

“A lot of these kids, not just in the Taco Bell case but other cases I’ve had, have never been in the workplace before,” he continued. “I don’t think they always absorb how inappropriate some of these comments that are made are, graphic sexual comments, or sexual overtures.”

Helping kids understand what to expect is a good idea, especially right now when so many parents struggling to make ends meet are encouraging their teens to help out by getting a job and covering some of their own expenses. That will put extra pressure on kids to stay in a job even if there is harassment, Cash pointed out, because teens will want to make their parents happy and also continue having a cell phone or car.

“I had a young lady tell me she had a car payment to make and that’s why she tolerated that type of conduct at work,” he said.

So bottom line, teens — no money or desire to please your parents is worth being harassed at work. And parents — time to have another talk with your kids about strangers, this time, strangers at work.

As for my father’s spying on me at work when I was a teen, Cash said: “Your dad may have had a good idea.”

If my dad were alive today I’d thank him.