I’ve been busy with the SHRM conference in New Orleans this past week, so here are a few leftover July Fourth fireworks for you to ponder over the long holiday weekend:

• Good fallout from the recession—workplace jerks have gone into hiding. I don’t know if I believe this entirely, but Joe Queenan made this point in this week’s Wall Street Journal, and it is an intriguing one. Here’s the gist of his argument:

“Jerks are annoying, but they aren’t stupid,” he writes. “They know that first-class nitwits make mouth-watering targets for human resource officers with layoff quotas. The office jerk has not disappeared. He is merely hiding in the hills. One day, he will come down from the mountains and wreak havoc again.”

And, Queenan feels that the jerks-in-hiding dynamic is actually one of the really good things coming out of the economic downturn.

“The grim specter of the return of the office jerk is perhaps the only reason some of us wish this recession goes on for a while,” he writes. “At least that way, some of the more odious office jerks will have a chance to get run over by a truck or start writing a blog. The solitary blogger is unquestionably a jerk, but a self-employed jerk is a threat to no one.”

Hmmm … I think I may have encountered a couple of these solitary blogger/jerks at SHRM in New Orleans. You know who you are. And yes, I’m with Queenan that the self-employed jerk is a good thing for workplace harmony everywhere.

• Prospects for SHRM San Diego 2010—it will New Orleans deja vu all over again. I predicted many months ago that events like SHRM’s big annual conference were likely to see up to a 50 percent drop in attendees this year given the tough economy, and although I hate to say it, my forecasting was right on the money. (Shows you what a pricey MBA can do, I guess.)

So, here’s an early prediction for SHRM 2010 in San Diego next June: Don’t bet on attendance to be any better than 2009 in New Orleans. In fact, it may actually be a little bit worse.

Why do I think this? Overriding Reason No. 1 is because we will soon be going into the budget season for businesses and organizations planning for 2010, and given the lackluster unemployment numbers that came out today, it is clear that we aren’t going to be out of the woods with this recession for a while.

This means that companies will continue to hold tight on discretionary travel for events like the SHRM conference for another year, at least.

Overriding Reason No. 2 is that SHRM 2010 is in San Diego.

This bugs the hell out of us West Coasters, but people living east of Denver get all worked up about long trips to the Pacific Time Zone. This is more perception than reality, of course, but my educated guess is that there will be a lot of would-be SHRM attendees who will opt out simply because they think San Diego is just too far to travel to.

Of course, the SHRM pooh-bahs who plan this big annual event may be able to have some impact on San Diego attendance if they heed some of the big lessons from New Orleans as it applies to speakers, but like all things with SHRM, I’m not holding my breath.

 • “Workplace From Hell” story, July Fourth edition. If there is one workplace you don’t want to work at today it is United Airlines, where they had a computer meltdown at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Now, I used to be a mega-frequent flier on United, but their service and customer experience has absolutely gone in the toilet the last few years. I don’t fly them much anymore, so I can’t say this with 100 percent certainty, but my guess is that today—leading into a long holiday weekend with a major computer glitch at its biggest hub—is a day that neither United workers nor customers will soon forget. Great fireworks for a happy Independence Day, indeed.

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