attack in the workplace.
Still, that doesn’t quell the fears
of Kelly Hoffman, an employee at a
dog-ridden Web retail firm in Reading,
Pennsylvania, who notes, “One person’s
perk is another person’s nightmare.”
Hoffman says the three or four dogs
in the small office also make her “feel
lousy,” because of her allergies.
Beyond that, she claims, they’re
a nuisance and reduce productivity,
because colleagues constantly take the
dogs outside for potty breaks. “You’re on
the phone trying to take a phone order,
and all of a sudden there’s a loud bark in
your ear and you can’t hear the custom-
er trying to place the order,” she says.
Her office has no formal guidelines, oth-
er than to keep the animal under control
and ensure that it’s house-trained.
Policies vary among companies.
Many are thorough and clearly de-
lineated. (Sermo’s etiquette memo,
for instance, stipulates that contract
workers can’t bring their dogs to work,
because they’ll disrupt the harmony of
the established pack.) Others are vague,
ad hoc, or not consistently enforced, if
it happens to be inconvenient to the top
dog of an organization, observes Jennifer
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Fearing, chief economist at the Humane
Society of the United States (HSUS).
That was the impetus behind Fear-
ing’s 2008 book, Creating Dog Friendly
Workplaces, which she co-wrote with
renowned dog trainer Liz Palika. Fear-
ing used the HSUS’s 200-employee of-
fices in Washington as a testing ground
for a model process. After 18 months,
941-330-9318
they’d had no issues with their 35 dogs.
ririm@msn.com
Among their procedures: an application
www.healthythermalimaging.com
process, probation period, and require-
ments that each cubicle be fitted with
a baby gate, as well as a green, yellow
or red sign, to indicate the degree of a
dog’s socialization among strangers.
“Dogs went from being in the yard
to in our beds. It’s too much cognitive
dissonance to leave these creatures all
alone all day,” says Fearing, whose book
was sparked by an uptick in inquiries
from human resource departments.
“Companies ought to do this right, and
that’s what we want to empower them
to do.”
Source: Adapted from The Christian
Science Monitor
2 Collier / Lee Counties
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