Well, that didn’t take long, and I figured it wouldn’t.
A stranger who heckled a mother and daughter for wearing masks in a Lincoln, Nebraska, supermarket (see original post here) has been identified by internet sleuths.
Dubbed “Coughing Karen,” she’s Janene Hoskovec (photo, left), 55, of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to the Phoenix New Times (story here). She worked for German software company SAP as a “client partner,” which I guess is another title for an account executive, but doesn’t anymore. They fired her after learning of this incident.
Hoskovec should’ve been smart enough to know better. Growing up in Lincoln, she was high school class president. She attended the Air Force Academy, where she studied engineering, and has MBA and law degrees, although the latter was from a now-defunct for-profit law school with an unimpressive track record, of the sort they sometimes call “diploma mills,” and it doesn’t appear she’s a licensed lawyer. (Details here.) So maybe she doesn’t know better; maybe she’s stupid.
What she did certainly was. She’s now a pariah “Karen,” unemployed, and may face criminal charges back in Lincoln, her hometown. Just to flaunt her contempt for masks. If you ask me, it’s not worth it. One more thing: Nowadays, everyone has a video camera. Do this, and you will be all over the internet. Everyone knows that, so what was she thinking?
She wasn’t. This was out-of-control impulses, that came from who-knows-where. The moral of this story is learn to control your impulses.
If you’re wondering, yes, there was a citywide mask mandate in effect where this happened. But she’s not in trouble because she didn’t comply with it. Nobody said anything to her. She’s in trouble for harassing a stranger for no reason, or perhaps a whole bunch of bottled-up reasons fermenting in a caustic brew of cabin fever and not liking being told what to do, which the stranger and her child have nothing to do with.
Reminds me of a story that goes like this. A guy had a bad day at work, came home, and yelled at his wife. She yelled at the kids. One of the kids kicked the dog. The dog chased the cat. The cat knocked over the birdcage and ate the canary. The poor canary’s dying thought was to wonder what he’d done to piss off the cat.
Don’t be that family. Remember the poor canary.
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Guess she may have or will soon have a very happy employment attorney. Fairly deep pockets. She sues, they make a deal and everyone is happy.
Based on what? Unless she had a contract guaranteeing employment, she has no recourse. At-will employers can let employees go for any reason, including no reason at all.