CASE 12 When she was nervous or felt bad, Karen ate sweet things THE CASE OF KAREN HENDERSON (Karen Henderson was a French-Canadian who came to the U.S. thirty years ago. She was fifty-eight years old and had worked as a secretary to the president of the Mathers Candy Company for twenty- four years. Karen made only $5,000 a year when she started, but she got a $1,000 raise every year, until she she was making $29,000. On May 1, 1883, the presi- dent of the company, Mr. Mathers, told her she was no longer needed. He was going to replace her with a new secretary for $10,000. Karen was very upset because she was going to be sixty years old in two years and could retire from the company with a pension of $5,000 a year. Now she would get nothing “Is this the way you repay me for twenty-four years of service?” Karen asked. “You have one more month: then you're fin- ished,” said Mr. Mathers. “You don’t work as fast as you used to, and besides, you've missed ten days due to illness in the last five months. I need a fast and healthy secretary. I'm sorry, Karen, but business is business. Sooner or later age must step aside and let youth take over. None of us is getting any younger.” (2) Karen saw her lawyer and they decided to sue the company. It seemed so unfair. They were going to argue that the company was practicing illegal age discrimination. Karen and her lawyer felt that it was illegal to fire someone just for getting old (3) Karen had health problems, and this bad news made them worse. She had diabetes, a disease of the blood. She had to take insulin every day. She was not supposed to eat sweet things, but when she was nervous and felt bad, she ate them anyway. She could not stop herself. Once, after a fight with her husband, Jack, she ate a pound of chocolates and had to to go the hospital (4) When the company found out that Karen was going to sue, Mr. Mathers told her she could stay. He gave her a new office—it used to be a closet! It had no windows and was very small. She was there by herself, and Mathers took away all of her respons bilites. Now she had almost nothing to do all day. ‘Once, when she was crying, Mr. Mathers brought her a pound of chocolates, She ate them all. She got sick and almost died. Mathers told the other employees that he didn’t know she was a diabetic, and he said that he didn’t know that diabetics weren't supposed to eat sweets. (5)_ Karen knew that if she quit she would get no pension and she would not be able to sue, She was being forced to leave, but she wanted to get her revenge before. she left. She knew that ten years ago the company was in deep financial trouble. In 1972 Mr. Mathers changed the company’s books so that they paid no taxes. The company was supposed to pay $25,000. Karen told Mathers that she was going to tell the truth to the newspapers and to the police. She did not like doing that, and she-left Mathers's office crying. (6) At the same time, she was having problems with her marriage. Her husband, Jack, also worked for the Mathers Candy Company, and he was interested in Mathers's new secretary, Sadie. Sadie had already taken over many of Karen's ald responsibilities. (7) Karen decided to delay talking to the news: papers. Four days later, on May 10, 1983, her husband found her dead in bed. The medical examiner said she had died from too much sugar in her blood. By her bed was an empty box of chocolates and an empty half-gallon container of chocolate ice cream. {8) The police found a typewritten suicide note. They discovered that two pages of her diary had been torn out. One of the pages was from May 7, 1983, and the other was from May 3, 1972. Parts of the diary were written in French. These parts told the truth about Mathers not paying taxes.