At face value, this is a ridiculous headline. But the article then says his managers berated and insulted him for leaving the party after an anxiety attack, and the company then fired him for taking days off work for “unsafe work practices,” due to having anxiety?
Seems like pretty often headlines that paint a lawsuit as frivolous and ridiculous seem a little more rational after some digging
There’s so much more to it as well. He repeatedly asked the company not to throw a party for him due to his anxiety (apparently this is standard practise for their office and he knew it would be triggering for him) and they “forgot” about his request. On the day in question, he predictably had a panic attack and went to his car to do breathing exercises.
The next day he was called into a meeting where he was insulted and grilled about “ruining the party” and “stealing his co-workers’ joy”, which caused him to have another panic attack and start doing coping behaviours like hugging himself, at which point his employers decided he must be angry and was going to turn violent. They then suspended him for days and later told him he’d been fired.
So yeah, it’s not over an “unwanted birthday party”, it’s over employers repeatedly failing to accommodate someone’s disability, trying to frame them as the villain for having accessibility needs, and firing them for not conforming to some stupid office politics.
Source with the court documents
I am completely pro-lawsuit. Lawsuits are often the only tool that otherwise powerless individuals have to demand some accountability from large corporations and institutions, and historically lawsuits have been a very important tool for civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, and disability rights. But this is exactly why the media is always depicting lawsuits as something frivolous and silly that only uptight spoiled crybabies who want easy money do, and people just eat up that propaganda without doing any research or critical thinking.
REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA AND THAT SENSATIONALIZED JOURNALISM FALLS UNDER THAT
Never forget that McDonald’s coffee gave that lady 3rd degree burns and she just wanted money to cover her medical bills.
It was not even just a failure to support his disability. The company gave out his private information (birthday) to his coworkers against his explicit request.
