Just Stop

We are well past the point of reasonableness when every misdeed, indiscretion, and moment of poor judgment warrants a lawsuit. We have become a society that craves justice as long as it comes with a paycheck. 

It’s become just another unfortunate part of our society, the need to punitively punish people and companies that do us wrong. Where once a simple apology and an acknowledgment of having done someone wrong was enough with perhaps the cherry on top as a token of sincerity.

Now we want a payout. 

We want cold, hard cash. 

That will teach them!

There are definitely wrongs that can only come with the price of a heavy cash cost because with companies that is how you make them hurt many times. You hit them in the wallet. These are faceless entities that look at people as walking cash machines and want nothing more than our business. The boards that run these companies and the CEOs that serve those boards are never personally hit, it’s the company, and while they don’t want to lose money, there are line items in budgets that account for the occasional Whoops-a-Daisy that may happen. 

Once upon a time you would only see the big I Am Suing The Company sort of cases pop up when it was a huge issue that caused death, major damage, or was part of something that harmed people irreparably. It wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. People didn’t just sue every time they were upset. 

There had to be a good reason. 

Now though we’re a culture that feels so entitled to our way at all times that we threaten to sue everyone and everything around us if we don’t get the exact experience and item we demand. 

Most of the time these things can be remedied by simply reaching out to a person, a manager, or a higher up. This doesn’t always work but then sometimes we just eat a turd once in a while and that’s life. 

Life isn’t always fair. 

We know that, right?

Now, if you are harmed, or your life is irreparably altered then sure, you should look into what measures can be taken if you cannot get satisfaction at the ‘street’ level of a company – or general person. The sad fact is though that there are far too many lawyers willing to take cases to sue people that shouldn’t even get that far. 

Not everything that is done to you is a crime and not every slight should end in you getting paid. 

This is where we’re at though. 

Take a look at the proliferation of court shows on TV where people sue one another over and over again in cases when it could probably have been resolved more easily. Yeah, there are crooks out there, and companies aren’t really looking out for our best interests, but unfortunately, that’s sort of our society. 

We aren’t very nice to one another. 

Sure, sue if it’s something big, but stop suing over everything. 

And stop hiding behind the line of – this isn’t about the money, it’s about justice. 

Please. 

It’s about the money. 

If it wasn’t about the money you’d sue for a dollar or something small and not some outrageous sum where the company will offer say, a million dollars or half a million to get you to shut up about your fifty million dollar lawsuit. 

I see that through my job. 

An idiot that wants money for projects that don’t exist but when they don’t get the funding they sue for discrimination that never happened. They cause such a scene that they are paid off just to go away. 

That’s also part of our society and lawyers (and common folks, now) know that. 

Living in Flint, I joined the Flint Water Crisis lawsuit that’s ongoing. I don’t expect to get anything but we were put in harm’s way. The settlement is $600 million dollars and two hundred plus of that will go to lawyers. 

THAT is why lawyers want these suits and want them high – so they can get paid. 

Simple as that. 

With discrimination at a corporate level it does need to be called out but there is more power in public shame, and outcry than in you asking for a payout. And once you do ask for it you don’t get to pretend that this is all for justice just because you were coached to say the money doesn’t matter and that whatever happened will harm you or someone else irreparably. 

Stop. 

I am no fan of big business, but stopping the world so you can get your pound of flesh over something that should be handled with a meeting, some honest talk, and proof that they hear you, has become disgusting. Sure, you’ll get paid, and maybe enough to just retire and be rich if you are loud enough, but what changed?

What really changed?

The company will have opened their wallets, some nobodies that make next to nothing and who may not even have done what they are accused of doing, will lose their jobs as a token, and that’s it. 

Sure, they may make folks go through a training that they already had to go through, or maybe expand it or heck, even BEGIN it, but does it change something?

If a racist person or heck, a racist cop goes through training to better understand people of color and their issues and racism in general do you think it will genuinely change their hearts or just make them more entrenched in their beliefs out of pettiness?

People can change. 

Companies can change. 

And yeah, money can be used as a tool to push that change, but in this modern world where the currency of public opinion is worth more than the dollar to these companies, it seems wiser to focus on that and not on your wallet. 

Getting rich may put balm to the sore spot you have from what happened to you but it won’t take away the thing that caused it, and it may not even really address the act at all. Once you are paid off and the story dies, it’s back to normal with a few fired people who mattered very little lying on the ground as an offering and no real change made at all. 

…c…