jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I looked around to see if there already was an answer to this issue but didn't find one.  If there is, please point me to it.  I have a select (dropdown) that I use in inline editing to drop down a list of employees.  This works great on Chrome, FF and IE (through version 8).  Apparently in IE9 the sorting of the list changed in select lists.  I found plenty of references to the pain it caused other web applications because apparently the sorting of a list in a dropdown on a web form is "implementation specific".  So there IS no way to guarantee the sort (apparently).  The editoptions in my grid contain a list of employees sorted correctly by last name and first name and the employee ID's are option values.  It looks like IE9 sorts the select list by employee ID (option values) which of course, messes up the sorting by name.

So the question is, are there any ideas as to how to work around this feature in IE9?  I know I probably can't prevent IE9 from sorting the list contents (wish there was) but is there something I can do in jqGrid to re-establish the list sorting the way it is presented in the editoptions?

Any ideas would be appreciated.