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Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

As someone who also does not like being the center of attention, I wish this man got more money, and that this company would go bankrupt. FUCK these people. They directly caused this man to have two panic attacks, BOTH of which could have been avoided by literally doing nothing, and then they fire him?

Something that drives me absolutely nuts is that most people assume that anyone who wishes to avoid social interaction is actually really just too afraid to be social, and that forcing them to do so is an acceptable thing to do. It's not! It's incredibly callous and insensitive and it's something that should only ever be considered by extremely close friends. Please respect people's wishes when they say they don't want a party, especially if you are just coworkers!

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> As someone who also does not like being the center of attention, I wish this man got more money, and that this company would go bankrupt.

Bear in mind that when a company goes bankrupt, usually it's not only the owners who feel pain. It's also employees, creditors, their suppliers, their customers, etc.

There is a certain sort of hyper-social office worker that seems utterly incapable of respecting personal boundaries. Unfortunately, this sort of person is often found in management or HR, where they are positioned to make themselves a true menace to others. I'm glad to see this sort of office personalty become a financial liability for companies, and I hope there are more big lawsuits like this in the near future.

the lawyer will get probably a good chunk of it and the company will drag its feet to avoid payment or reduce the amount . not that much money. Goes to show how most outcomes are much smaller than headlines about tens or hundred million dollar settlements.

After an award is given in a judgement, the time for a company to reduce the amount is long past, and they can only drag their feet for so long. With the proper filing, the plaintiff can put a lien on the company's bank accounts, and in egregious cases can even walk up with a cop and start taking stuff from the company to satisfy the award (a "sheriff's sale").

You're right that the lawyer will probably get a good chunk of it, though.

The lawyer will probably get between 1/3 to 1/2 of the award. That's how they afford to take cases on a "no fee if you don't win" contingency basis.

I can't speak to an exact payment amount, but I know that lawyers tend to only take contingency cases that they believe will be a slam dunk.

Meh, I am glad he got a decent settlement. I don't agree that 100 people getting laid off and the damage that does is called for though. That's not really justice as I understand the concept.

> I wish this man got more money, and that this company would go bankrupt.

Because fuck proportionality and fuck every employee and shareholder of the company even if they had nothing to do with this?

Same here. Even moreso considering they tried to say that his "outburst" was in violation of their workplace violence policy. I'd love to see them drilled for defamaiton, perjury (if they tried to push that lie on the stand), etc.. What truly amazes me is their plan to appeal this instead of taking it on the mouth and learning a lesson.

Too bad the appeal process isn't a "double-or-nothing" type of deal. I'd love to see them take more of a financial hit from this.

Compagnies dont organise birthday parties; well intentioned people do. I think you are overreacting.

According to the Link NYK article: “The person who was responsible for the birthday parties who he talked to flat out forgot about his request,” Bucher said. “She didn’t do it to be mean. She said she would accommodate it and she just forgot.”

I see no reason to disbelieve this; mistakes happen.

I do think the subsequent actions such as "reading him the riot act and accused him of stealing other coworkers’ joy" and firing him were completely bonkers and devoid of empathy though. It's weird that this escalated like this and didn't just end with an apology and "are you okay?"

Do you get violent when you have panic attacks? I don't, but I'm wondering how other people experience those and if this person was more or less like mine.

TFA links to another article on the same story that has more details, claiming that the violence was entirely imagined / hypothetical

https://linknky.com/news/2022/04/14/man-awarded-450k-after-f...

Thank you for the source - it was surprising to me that the word "violent" was used in the original article but the behavior was not elaborated on in any way.

I'm not sure why people keep asking about this -- it was a transparently desperate ploy by the defendant to portray themselves as victims, and it didn't work.

People kept asking because the original article doesn't address the "violence" accusation at all. It does link to one that does, but while I do think it's reasonable to expect commenters to have read the article, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that they also followed every link and read all of those articles too. The other article link that provides the information came after the thread had already developed quite a bit. It might be helpful to look at the time timestamps on the comments.

It does sound like the violence accusation was a BS excuse, so the original anger is justified. But gathering all information before grabbing a pitchfork is a responsible thing to do.

Thank you! It does seem incredibly outrageous

Trying to convert introverts should be viewed about the same as "conversion therapy" for LGBT.

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