A literal and figurative Karen, in this case, a British woman named Karen Conaghan, sued her former employer, the International Airlines Group, after her co-workers didn’t give her a farewell card when she left the company. But you see, the thing is, a farewell card was acquired. It was just never given to her because so few people felt compelled to sign it. Ouch.
In her lawsuit, Karen argues that not receiving a farewell card was a breach of equality law and that it reflected a failure to acknowledge her existence within the company. She was just looking for a little recognition is all. Just some acknowledgment that she existed in this place with these people. That’s understandable and relatable. Is that something worth suing someone over? Probably not. Especially when it turns out people did go out of their way to get a farewell card but no one felt particularly compelled to sign it, presumably because they didn’t think she was worth it.
That’s kind of how the judge sees it. The tribunal’s judge, Kevin Palmer, said that giving her the card would’ve been more insulting than not presenting it to her at all. He’s basically saying, “Lady, you should be so lucky as to have been spared the embarrassment.”
There are some other, more serious complaints in the case. Forty of them, including claims of sexual harassment, unfair dismissal, and victimization. But the tribunal dismissed all of the allegations, with Judge Palmer saying Karen’s perspective on her workplace experience was clouded by a “conspiracy-theory mentality.”
He said that a lot of her complaints, which she details in her filing, amount to nothing more than misunderstandings of normal social interactions. For instance, she says that she used the word “whiz” in a card for a colleague—then says that another colleague then copied her use of the word while simultaneously correcting her spelling to add another “Z” at the end of the word. This was, apparently, a workplace infraction worthy of a lawsuit. Judge Palmer ultimately emphasized that there was no evidence linking her grievances to her sex and that she was just being overly suspicious.
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