Don’t Get Your Jingles in a Jangle - Employment Law Lessons Learned in “Elf” the Movie
Christmas time is here. You can hear sleigh bells ringing, Mariah Carey singing, and soon you’ll hear the tapping of reindeer hooves on your roof. For me and my family, Christmas is a time filled with traditions and I love them, mostly because we are together to enjoy them. This includes the time we spend together as couch potatoes enjoying a marathon of Christmas movie classics and favourites.
Nowadays, various surveys which ask people what their favourite Christmas movie is, find Elf in the top 3, if not #1. And why not? After all, Elf, the story of Buddy, a human orphan who is raised by Papa Elf and becomes one of Santa’s toy-shop elves, has all of the “feels” that make a good Christmas movie. It makes you laugh, sing, cringe at the idea of maple syrup on spaghetti, and remember the importance of fun and family at Christmas.
It goes without saying that Buddy is the personification of the “merry” in Merry Christmas. He is filled with the joy, happiness and jolliness of the yuletide and does everything he can to help others find the wonder in the season. He is passionate about being Santa’s elf and works hard to promote Santa’s brand and beliefs and, in doing so, saves his father, a stranded Santa, and Christmas itself.
Unfortunately, Buddy is also human and, in that capacity, he is a textbook example of an employee many employers would not want in their organization. Not sure what I’m talking about? Let’s take a look at Buddy the employee in his three movie workplaces and lessons that we can take away from each.
1. Buddy as an Elf in Santa’s North Pole Workshop
Buddy is a human who was raised in the ways and environment of his adopted elf family. Lucky for him, Santa is fully compliant with his human rights obligations, treating Buddy as equal to all the other elves despite his difference in stature, and accommodating his human-related limitations when it comes to building and making toys.
Despite the training he has received from Santa and the other elves, however, Buddy can only produce 85 Etch-a-Sketches a day, and so his production level is significantly less than expectations and his daily target of 1,000. I commend Buddy’s manager and Santa for their efforts to encourage Buddy and help him find confidence in his work instead of referring to himself as a “cotton-headed ninny muggins”. They are respectful, supportive and provide positive feedback, even in the face of his obvious performance shortfalls. Unfortunately, these efforts, and a transfer to a quality control position better suited for Buddy’s abilities, are not enough to give Buddy the self-confidence he needs to excel in his work. This, along with the new knowledge that he is, in fact, a human adult, leads to his decision to move away from his family and find his way to the big City and the father he never knew he had.
Lesson: Sometimes people are simply not suited for the position they are employed in. In those cases, it is important for the employer to treat the employee fairly by documenting performance issues, work with the employee to ensure performance expectations are clear, and, where appropriate, provide the employee with their termination entitlements in accordance with their contractual and legal rights should the employee leave their employment on a voluntary or involuntary basis.
2. Buddy as a Gimbel’s Department Store Elf
When Buddy arrives in New York City the Manager of the Gimbel’s Toy Department mistakes him for a store employee and instructs him to get back to work, even though Buddy does not really work there. Rather than correct the Manager’s obvious mistake, Buddy stays, enticed by the knowledge Santa will be there the next morning. At first, all seems well. Buddy is comfortable in his new “North Pole” environment and makes light work of building a full Lego cityscape, completing a “Welcome” sign with Light Brights, and crafting more snowflakes than we have seen land in Toronto in the past 2 weeks. He is, it seems, the perfect elf. But is he a good employee?
Unfortunately, on his first day on the job, Buddy argues with his Manager in front of both his co-workers and store customers, insisting the Manager is wrong and lacks knowledge about the real North Pole experience. Unfortunately, this is not the only time Buddy’s lack of basic social skills interferes with his work relationships.
Within 24 hours Buddy engages in further inappropriate behaviour when he calls the store Santa a liar and a fake while a young boy sits on his knee. And he doesn’t stop there, despite the store Santa’s pleas to do so. Instead, he goes on to tell his co-worker that he “smells like beef and cheese” and rips off his white beard. Importantly, the Gimbel’s Santa did not seem embarrassed, hurt or humiliated by Buddy’s comments. He knew that what Buddy was saying about him not being the real Santa was true. Instead, he appeared to be angry that Buddy was interrupting him and interfering with him performing his work duties. Had it stopped there, perhaps the matter could have been addressed by a warning to Buddy and a direction that he let his issues with Gimbel’s holding out their Santa as the real man rest. After all, workplace harassment is defined by the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act (the “OHSA”) as a course of vexatious comment or conduct against a worker that is known or ought reasonably have been known to be unwelcome. Buddy’s comments were made during a brief and isolated incident and were not so severe, in and of themselves, to cause irreparable damage to the working relationship.
Further, it is clear that Buddy was not acting in a malicious way. His intent, it seems, is to protect the image and brand of his former employer, the actual Santa. While proving workplace harassment does not require one to prove an employee’s intent to harm or humiliate the other, the intent of the alleged harasser ought not to be ignored and can often play a role in remediating the relationship between the employees after a workplace investigation is completed. Again, had the interaction between Buddy and his co-worker stopped there, perhaps the work relationship could have been salvaged. Of course, in this case the employer never got the opportunity to explore that avenue.
Lesson: Workplace harassment, when not addressed in a timely and appropriate manner, can escalate in the workplace to threats and/or physical violence. Unfortunately, regardless of whether Buddy’s comments meet the definition of workplace harassment under the OHSA, Buddy and the store Santa engaged in a full-on fight throughout the store’s North Pole while customers and their children looked on, all the while with Buddy yelling, “He’s a fake!” Buddy is arrested and, though not shown in the movie, is presumably asked not to return to Gimbel’s.
It goes without saying that physical violence and assault in the workplace is wrongful conduct and constitutes workplace violence under the OHSA. It is also criminal conduct and may be cause for the dismissal of one or both of the employees for cause. In this case, the conduct of Buddy and the store Santa likely also caused reputational damage to Gimbels and its brand. A major department store never wants to be accused of telling children Santa is not real, or risking physical harm to store customers who may get caught up in the fight. Especially in today’s environment, there is no doubt a “Santa vs. elf fight” would have gone viral across social media, and around the world, in minutes. Employee action such as this in public, and in front of children, represents a big risk to a company’s reputation. An employer’s efforts in cultivating a corporate culture highlighting the importance of workplace health, safety and respect, as well as communications with employees regarding their role in supporting the employer’s brand, go a long way in mitigating the risks of reputational damage from employee actions.
3. Buddy as a Mailroom Clerk
Lucky for Buddy, his period of unemployment is short-lived as he quickly moved on to work (presumably on an unpaid or volunteer basis) in the mailroom at the publishing house headed up by his father. Again, Buddy has the best of intentions and is thrilled to be working with his dad. That said, rather than hunkering down and making his dad proud, Buddy gets drunk with his new co-workers, starts an impromptu dance party in the mailroom, and disrupts the entire department.
Buddy is removed from the mailroom, but his disruptive impact in the workplace continues when, less than 24 hours later, he interrupts a meeting with Miles Finch, an important children’s author. Buddy not only embarrasses his boss (his father) in an important work meeting simply for the purpose of discussing his personal love life, but he disrespects a visitor to the workplace who is there to be wooed for an important project with his employer. In this case, it is clear from Mr. Finch’s reaction that he is offended by Buddy’s referring to elves while pointing at him. After calling Mr. Finch an elf several more times, and despite his level of upset, Mr. Finch gives Buddy the option to stop before the interaction goes too far. Unfortunately, Buddy is oblivious to the fact that Mr. Finch finds his comments offensive and chalks his response up to him being “an angry elf”. Again, the matter quickly escalates to a physical fight and, unfortunately for the company, the loss of a much-needed agreement with Mr. Finch to use one of his ideas for a new children’s book.
Lesson: Perhaps the laws of the North Pole relating to workplace harassment are different. And perhaps, when working in an environment largely comprised of elves, it is not offensive to refer to those who are short-statured as elves. But in Ontario, it matters not whether Buddy subjectively knew that his comments were offensive, humiliating, demeaning or embarrassing to Mr. Finch. Rather, the OHSA provides only that the comments are “known or ought reasonably to be known” to be unwelcome. The standard is an objective one and arguably met here given Mr. Finch’s persistent dares for Buddy to call him an elf “one more time” before there are consequences.
Even had Buddy’s dad not himself quit at the end of the meeting with Miles Finch, it is likely that Buddy would have, again, been asked not to return to this workplace.
A Happy Ending
Thankfully, Buddy the Elf finds his passion in the end. Some people are not comfortable in a traditional office environment, or even in a traditional or stereotypical employee role. This certainly holds true for Buddy. Workers seek to be engaged, motivated, heard and appreciated. In Buddy’s case, these cornerstones were provided in his new found success as a children’s book author. He finds an environment that welcomes his passion for Christmas and provides flexibility for his unique background and way of looking at things. The last lesson we all learn is that sometimes the first job isn’t the right job, but finding where you fit, or doing what you love, will make you feel right.
This Christmas, I hope we all find some of Buddy’s joy for the season and that employers and employees alike all remember to act respectfully and lawfully towards each other.
On behalf of all of us at Piccolo Heath, I wish you all Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.
