A popular employee at Milwaukee’s Genistic Labs is taking the CEO to court over the right to a friendly greeting he says he invented and has been using for over 20 years.
“I go up to people and put one hand on their shoulder, the other on their waist,” says veteran analyst Max Torrey. “It’s what I’m known for.”
CEO Gabrielle Portnoy – having observed the greeting and noticing Torrey’s popularity – recently decided to start using it herself. At first, Torrey took this as a compliment.
Then Portnoy called him in and asked him to find another greeting – offering either the “fake point and gun click” or the “thumbs up” sign as replacements. Torrey refused. An HR representative then informed him that since he’d created the greeting on company time, it technically belonged to the company.
Torrey has hired a lawyer, and continues to use the greeting – as does Portnoy. Now a judge will decide who owns it in the end.
