Not doing what was needed cost company $450,000

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 16, 2022

The headline on WLKY News "Kentucky man sues employer for throwing him birthday party, and now they owe him $450K" was a bad choice. Given the fact that an employee told his supervisor he needed her to skip honoring his birthday, she decided to do it anyway. Why? Why would someone want to do something for someone that was clearly going to hurt them? Was she so oblivious to the fact that even telling her he had a problem with it was not enough to get her to change her mind?

The employee found out about the party and was so stressed out about it that he went to his car instead of going to the lunchroom. He ended up being fired!
 

A Kentucky man took his employer to court after they threw him a birthday party he didn't want, and the jurors sided with him.

Now, his employer owes him $450,000.

The verdict was handed down this week in Kenton County Circuit Court in Northern Kentucky. The plaintiff, an employee of Gravity Diagnostics, sued his employer after he was fired following a birthday party they threw for him in August.

The employee asked the office manager days before his birthday in August to not arrange a birthday celebration as they did for other employees.

Then on Aug. 7, the employee's birthday, the office arranged for a lunchtime birthday party in the lunchroom, according to the lawsuit. The employee said that he found out about the party as he was headed to his lunch break, which triggered a panic attack.
read more here

This goes to show that not doing what was needed was not intended to be a good thing to the recipient. How many times have you told someone what you needed help with, but they ignored what you needed and did only what they wanted to do "for you" that you didn't want or need in the first place?

It happens all the time. It means they are doing it to make themselves feel good about themselves and not making your life any easier.

When you have a mental illness, you know what your triggers are and you do all you can to avoid them. You know what they will cause you to go through. This employee was caused to suffer for this "gift" given to him he didn't want. He must have had to explain it to his coworkers, causing even more emotional pain, and then had to face more with his supervisor, topped off with higher-ups who then fired him.

All the avoidable distress caused should be a lesson to everyone out there, especially in the workplace. How many of us have been in a forced situation like that? You tell family you don't want parties but they do it anyone because they think you deserve to have some fun. You tell them you don't want to go to a party or movie or in large crowds, and then they get angry because you won't go with them. 

You need to be left out of it without being punished for it. It is a no-win situation for you. Most of us cringe when it comes to the approaching event someone is talking about because we know it will cause us pain to go and more pain if we don't because the people who are supposed to know us don't understand us.

If you are going through something like this and need to let people know how much harm they are doing by doing what they want instead of what you need, show them this article so they will understand how much pain they can inflict instead of making you feel the way they want you to feel.

Civilian with PTSD hired, then fired because of PTSD

Wounded Times continually points out how employers do not want to hire veterans because they may...or may not have PTSD.

The following is a great example of the fact that civilians can have PTSD too, but employers never wonder about the other 8 million Americans with PTSD they hire all the time.

Woman Says She Was Fired As Gas Station Cashier Because Thorntons Couldn’t Accommodate Her PTSD

CBS Chicago
Tim McNicholas
January 17, 2020

CHICAGO (CBS) — A South Side woman says a major gas station chain fired her because they can’t accommodate her disability, even though she didn’t ask for any special accommodations.

CBS 2 Morning Insider Tim McNicholas has the story, including her questionable conversations with human resources.

“I asked her (the human resources employee) three times, ‘Why are you firing me?’ She said, ‘Because of your disability,’” she said.

Jamerson then got in touch with another human resources employee, and this time she recorded the call.

JAMERSON: “It stands as I’m terminated.”

HR: “Yes, ma’am”

JAMERSON: “Because of my disability.”

HR: “Not because of your disability, but because we can’t accommodate. And..”

JAMERSON: “You can’t accommodate my disability?”

HR: “Right.”

JAMERSON: “Okay.”

“I didn’t ask for any accommodations, or anything. So I didn’t understand,” she said.
PTSD patients sometimes struggle with interacting with the public, but Jamerson said she learned coping skills through months of therapy, and she was ready for the job.
read it here

It also shows that too many employers do not understand what PTSD is...or what the law is.

Fake service dogs hurt everyone

Multiple issues in service dog industry for people with autism, PTSD

By ALLEN G. BREED - AP National Writer
May 04, 2019

"About a month after losing Bailey, Katie committed suicide. Her mother is convinced things would have been different had Bailey worked out. "My Katie would still be alive today if we had been given a trained service dog," Evans says."

APEX, N.C. (AP) -- All the counseling, therapy and medication did little to ease 9-year-old Sobie Cummings' crippling anxiety and feelings of isolation. And so a psychiatrist suggested that a service dog might help the autistic child connect with other kids.

To Glenn and Rachel Cummings, Mark Mathis seemed like a dream come true. His kennel, Ry-Con Service Dogs, was just a couple of hours away, and he, too, had a child with autism. But what clinched the decision were Mathis' credentials.

"Is Ry-Con a certified program? Yes," stated an online brochure. "In 2013, Mark was certified as a NC state approved service dog trainer with a specialty in autism service dogs for children."

Ten months and $14,500 later, the family brought home a shaggy mop of a dog that Sobie had come to view as her "savior." But when they opened the front door, Okami broke from Glenn Cummings' grasp and began mauling one of the family's elderly dogs — all as Sobie watched from the stairs in mute horror.

It was only after they had returned Okami and asked for a refund that the family learned the truth: Mathis was not a state-certified dog trainer. In fact, North Carolina has no such certification program — and neither does any other state.

The service dog industry — particularly in the field of "psychiatric" service dogs for people with autism and post-traumatic stress disorder — has exploded in recent years. But a near complete absence of regulation and oversight has left needy, desperate families vulnerable to incompetence and fraud.

"It is a lawless area. The Wild West," says David Favre, a law professor at Michigan State University and editor of its Animal Legal and Historical Center website.

Properly training a service dog can take up to 1 ½ years and cost upward of $50,000, depending on the tasks it is taught to perform. But the Americans with Disabilities Act does not require that a service dog be professionally trained or certified. And, according to the U.S. Department of Justice , local and state agencies are prohibited from requiring that the dogs be registered.

"It needs to be specially trained to do tasks that relate to the person's disability, but it doesn't say anything about who does the training or the quality of training or the efficacy of it," says Lynette Hart, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of California, Davis. "So it's a very broad, wide-open barn door."
read more here

Veteran with PTSD Service Dog Needs Good Lawyer!

PTSD veteran claims unfair job termination

KLTV 7 ABC News
Bob Hallmark
December 9, 2018

"They had asked for proof that Ace was a service dog which we provided and provided again. Then I got an email saying I was terminated. No explanation," Jennifer says.

TYLER, TX (KLTV)

An East Texas woman, an army veteran who suffers PTSD, continues to struggle in a battle against what she says was an unfair termination from the company she worked for.

The controversy swirls around whether she was able to bring her service dog to work with her.

Jennifer Mcatee Willis of Henderson has been out of work for a month now.

In November after Willis had come back from her honeymoon, and informed her employer where she had worked for 3 years that she would start bringing her service dog 'Ace' to work with her. But that's when she says the trouble started.

"It's disturbed me in a lot of ways, the stress has gotten worse and I have nightmares almost every night," she says.

In a strange sequence, Jennifer was first notified by the company she worked for that if she brought 'Ace' to work with her, she would be terminated. After our initial story aired, she was notified she was still and employee.
read more here

If you have PTSD you have rights you need to know

VERIFY: Do you have to tell your employer you have PTSD?

First Coast News
October 26, 2018