Ah, Thursday. Gateway drug to the weekend. America's light at the end of the tunnel. The day when, at some point, somebody always asks if you want to get a drink after work, and you have to decide in advance what Friday's productivity is going to look like — assuming, of course, your employer actually paid you and you can scrape together the scratch for a couple of G&Ts (hey, it's almost summer). So what happened?

A U.S. District judge sided with the Polk County Sheriffs Office over a lawsuit that alleged juveniles were subjected to overly harsh conditions while in detention, claiming the Southern Poverty Law Center failed to make its case. Given Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd's, er, well-known attitude toward offenders of all stripes, one might safely assume the phrase "they're still breathin', aren't they?" probably made its way into the record at some point.

The St. Petersburg City Council unanimously passed an ordinance to help protect workers against wage theft. Complaints by wage-thieving business owners that they lost dozens of dollars every year to poverty-stricken employees/victims digging through their dumpsters in order to survive fell on unsympathetic ears.

And finally, remember that guy who used to run the company that provided concessions for the Trop, before video footage surfaced last year showing him kicking a dog in an elevator? He's been fined $5,000. Which is pretty cool and pretty steep for kicking a dog and all, but shouldn't the dog at least get a shot at knocking the guy's legs out from under him or something, too?

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2015.