Employee Survival Guide®
The Employee Survival Guide® is the no-nonsense employment law podcast made exclusively for employees. After 200+ episodes, we deliver the straight talk your employer and HR don’t want you to hear — covering every work and career issue that actually matters.
Hosted and produced by Mark Carey, a veteran employment lawyer with 29 years of experience who has litigated hundreds of cases — including class actions — in state and federal courts nationwide. Mark cuts through the BS with blunt, practical advice, always presenting both sides so you can make informed decisions. This podcast is also about your employment story and other courageous employees who have spoken out about their employers. If you work for a living, this is your podcast.
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Employee Survival Guide®
How A Strong Retaliation Case Gets Dismissed: Iris Calderon v. The Trustees of Columbia University
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Your case can be strong on the facts and still lose on paperwork. We unpack a 2026 federal court opinion involving a veteran Columbia University employee who alleges disability accommodation failures, age stereotyping, escalating retaliation, and a shocking workplace violation: her locked desk allegedly gets forced open and personal items removed, followed quickly by a demotion, loss of duties, relocation, and a pay cut. The timeline matters, but the legal traps matter just as much.
We break down the rules that decide whether a judge will even hear the merits. That includes exhaustion of administrative remedies under the ADA and Title VII, the right-to-sue letter requirement, and why a government shutdown does not automatically excuse jumping the line. We also dig into one of the most painful lessons in employment discrimination law: an unchecked box on an agency intake form can erase an entire theory, even when the conduct feels clearly connected.
From there we pivot to strategy, especially for New York listeners. We explain the election of remedies doctrine under New York State and New York City human rights laws, why the “free and easy” agency route can permanently waive your chance at a jury trial, and how Section 1981 can open a different path, including individual liability against a supervisor. Finally, we tie it together with a practical survival guide: how to document patterns, how to protect your deadlines, and how to think clearly about forum choice before you file anything.
If you’ve ever felt targeted at work or you’re trying to understand retaliation, discrimination, EEOC process, or reasonable accommodation rights, subscribe, share this with a coworker, and leave a review. What procedural trap surprised you most?
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For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.
Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.
Nightmare Scenario And Case Setup
SPEAKER_02Welcome to another episode of the Employee Survival Guide, produced by employment attorney Mark Carey.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Yeah, it is really great to be here for this one.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell It is because I mean imagine coming to work and finding your locked desk has been forcibly broken into by your boss. Like your personal items are just removed.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's awful.
SPEAKER_02Right. And then on top of that, discovering that a federal judge might just throw out your retaliation lawsuit simply because you, you know, forgot to check one single box on some bureaucratic form.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell I mean, it sounds like an absolute nightmare scenario, but it's well, it is a very real, incredibly common trap in employment litigation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We usually expect the law to act like an x-ray machine, you know, like binary, precise.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Like a broken bone shows up as a jagged white line and the doctor says, hey, there's the problem.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Exactly. But workplace discrimination doesn't look like a clean x-ray. It's murky. And the legal system that diagnoses it is just full of procedural tripwires.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell, which brings us to our mission today. If you're listening to this and you have ever felt targeted at work, or if you just want to know how to navigate the absolute minefield of employment law without, you know, drowning in legal jargon, you are in the right place.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02We are unpacking a 2026 federal court opinion. It's Iris Calderon versus the trustees of Columbia University. And we aren't just summarizing a lawsuit here. We are extracting the exact factual patterns of this employer's behavior. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we're translating the complex rules the court applied into a basic practical survival guide for you.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Okay, let's unpack this because before we can understand the court's rules, we really need to understand the human
Disability Notice And Accommodation Failures
SPEAKER_02story.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell We have to. The timeline of how this employer behaved is critical because courts don't just look at you know isolated incidents, they look for an escalating pattern.
SPEAKER_02So the setup here involves a woman named Iris Calderon. She's a 53-year-old Latina woman who, at the time of this lawsuit, had been working at Columbia University since 2008.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell So she's a veteran employee there.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Totally. By all accounts, she was a success story. I mean, in 2019, she was promoted to lead facilities service coordinator. She has tenure, experience, but she also has severe physical disabilities.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Right. Specifically, she had carpal tunnel syndrome and ulnar nerve neuropathy.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Yeah, which substantially limit her ability to do basic manual tasks like typing using a computer mouse. It got so bad she actually required wrist surgery in May of 2023.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell And the pivotal fact here for you to understand is that the university was fully aware of her medical condition.
SPEAKER_02Oh, completely.
SPEAKER_00They were on notice as early as July 2021. And when an employer knows about a disability, the legal clock starts ticking on their obligation to accommodate it.
SPEAKER_02Which they didn't do.
SPEAKER_00No. What we see from Columbia is a shift from passive neglect into something much more active and, frankly, discriminatory.
SPEAKER_02The passive neglect starts with the technology they issue her. Her university laptop keeps malfunctioning. It's crashing, failing to log in.
SPEAKER_00Standard IT headache, right?
SPEAKER_02You'd think. They eventually swap it out, but the replacement device has a major hardware defect. It constantly overheats.
SPEAKER_00Oh man.
SPEAKER_02Right. And for someone with severe neuropathy and nerve pain, resting your wrists on a burning hot laptop is agonizing. So she reports this to human resources, and HR essentially just ghosts her.
SPEAKER_00Which is wild. And then she comes back from her wrist surgery and makes a formal, documented request for reasonable accommodations.
SPEAKER_02She just wants a mouse.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. She isn't asking for a fundamental change to her job. She just asks for an ergonomic keyboard and mouse.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The law requires the employer to engage in what's called a good faith interactive process.
SPEAKER_02And instead, HR delays for weeks, sends her completely incompatible equipment, and when she attempts to get it corrected, they document her in their system as noncompliant.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Labeling an employee noncompliant for asking you to fix the broken equipment you sent them is it's just wild. It feels like setting a trap.
SPEAKER_02It really does. And while HR is playing games with the hardware, her supervisor, a guy named Tom Duong, starts weighing in.
SPEAKER_00Ah, yes.
SPEAKER_02In March 2023, while she's trying to get her tech issues sorted, he tells her, and I quote, maybe you're not used to technology. Wow. Right. And
Age Stereotypes And Targeted Comments
SPEAKER_02almost simultaneously, the university starts sending her unsolicited text messages and mailed notices asking her to participate in an Alzheimer's study.
SPEAKER_00And that right there, the Alzheimer's mailers and the technology comments, that is where we see the shift into active stereotyping.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The supervisor isn't addressing the actual hardware failure. He is attributing the problem to her age.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00This implicates the ADEA, the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. It creates this hostile environment where she is being signaled that her age makes her inherently incapable.
SPEAKER_02And Calderon realizes this, which triggers the massive escalation in this case. In August 2023, she files her first formal charge of discrimination with a state agency.
SPEAKER_00And if you think the employer would back down and pay themselves after getting a formal legal complaint, the exact opposite happens.
SPEAKER_02Duong immediately promotes a white male employee with significantly less experience than Calderon, giving him all the desirable shifts.
SPEAKER_00Typical.
Complaint Then Demotion And Pay Cut
SPEAKER_02It is. She immediately goes to management to complain about the break-in and the ongoing menopause comments. And the very next day, management informs her that her position is being restructured.
SPEAKER_00Convenient timing.
SPEAKER_02Very. She is stripped of all supervisory duties, relocated to a tiny cubicle right next to the copying area, and her core duties are handed over to younger employees they specifically describe as more adaptable with technology. Oh, and they cut her pay by 4%.
SPEAKER_00The timing is everything there. The demotion and the pay cut happened literally the day after her complaint about the desk.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So when I look at this timeline, I mean, this doesn't look like standard corporate incompetence or HR fumbling a tech request. It feels like complaining about a leaky roof and the landlord responding by turning off your water entirely.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell That's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_02But legally speaking, does the court actually view it as a targeted retaliatory pattern, or do they tend to give employers the benefit of the doubt on things like corporate restructuring?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell In this instance, the court views it as a highly credible allegation of a retaliatory pattern.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell The legal standard relies heavily on temporal proximity.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Meaning the timeline.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus Exactly. The closeness in time between the protected activity, which is complaining about discrimination, and the adverse action, which is the demotion.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Right.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell When you get demoted 24 hours after complaining about your boss making menopause comments, and the justification uses age-coded language like adaptable with technology, the court recognizes that as clear evidence of retaliation and stereotyping.
SPEAKER_02So the facts are terrible for the employer. You would think Alderona is cruising toward a massive jury verdict. But because she took legal action, she ran headfirst into a massive bureaucratic wall.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Yeah, she did.
SPEAKER_02You can have the most egregious, undeniable facts in the world, but if you step on a procedural landmine, the federal court will throw your case in the
Exhaustion Rules And Right To Sue
SPEAKER_02trash without ever looking at the evidence.
SPEAKER_00And that procedural wall is arguably the most dangerous part of employment law. The first major mechanism the court applied here is the doctrine of exhausting administrative remedies.
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's get into the mechanics of that, because I know that for federal claims, specifically under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII, which covers things like sex, race, and national origin, you can't just hire a lawyer and file a federal lawsuit on day one.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell You absolutely cannot. Congress designed the system so that federal courts are the option of last resort.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00The law mandates that you must first file a formal charge with a government agency, like the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, or a state equivalent.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So you have to go through them first.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Right. The idea is to give the agency a chance to investigate, mediate, and potentially resolve the issue before it clogs up the federal docket.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell You essentially have to take a ticket and wait in the bureaucratic line until the agency gives you a very specific document called a right to sue letter. Yes. But Calderon hit a snag here. She filed her federal lawsuit in October 2025, but she didn't actually have that right-to-sue letter in her hand yet. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00She jumped the gun.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. But her argument for jumping the gun was completely logical. The federal government was going through a shutdown at the time. The EEOC was effectively frozen.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus Yep. Completely shut down.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell So her lawyers argued for an equitable modification, a fairness exception, saying, look, the agency is shut down, we can't get the letter, let us proceed in court. But the judge completely rejected that argument and threw out her ADA and Title VII claims. Why doesn't a literal government shutdown pause the legal clock?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Because statutory deadlines and procedural prerequisites in federal court are utterly merciless.
SPEAKER_02Clearly.
SPEAKER_00The judge looked closely at the timeline. Calderon's legal team formally requested the right to sue letter on October 8th. And then they filed the federal lawsuit less than three weeks later on October 27th, right during the shutdown.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell So they didn't really wait.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. The court's perspective is that you didn't give the agency any actual opportunity to process the request before you rush the courthouse doors.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Wow.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell The underlying lesson is that patience is legally mandated. A slow agency or even a paralyzed agency does not grant you permission to bypass the administrative line.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So her disability claims get temporarily tossed just for being early. But there is another element to this exhaustion rule that is even more punishing, and it involves her claim for sex
The Single Checkbox That Kills Claims
SPEAKER_02discrimination.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Oh, the checkbox issue.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. She tried to sue in federal court for sex discrimination based on the desk break-in and the feminine products being removed, but the judge permanently threw that claim out because of what was literally on a piece of paper from years ago. Right. When she originally filled out her agency complaint form, she checked the boxes for age, disability, race, and retaliation. But she left the box labeled sex blank.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell And the strictness of that initial intake form catches so many people off guard. The court's rationale is about notice.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Notice to the employer?
SPEAKER_00Yes. If you don't explicitly check the box for sex discrimination, the agency never investigates it, and the employer is never officially put on notice that they need to defend against it.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So it just legally doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Therefore, the federal court says we don't have jurisdiction to hear a claim that the agency never saw.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell So it's like trying to board a flight. You might have a perfectly valid ticket to fly, but if you try to board before your zone is called, like filing your lawsuit before you get the right-to-sue letter, the gate agent rejects you.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell That's a great analogy.
SPEAKER_02You have to wait. But if you check the right boxes when you first buy your ticket, you can add baggage later on if it matches the same trip. Because that is exactly what saved some of her other claims, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell The Court actually allowed her age discrimination claims regarding the 2025 copier desk demotion and the menopausal comments, even though those happened long after she filed her initial agency paperwork.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Your flight analogy hits the nail on the head regarding the reasonably related
When New Retaliation Still Counts
SPEAKER_00doctrine. What's fascinating here is how the court handles post-charge conduct. Right. The court understands that workplace retaliation is dynamic. If an employee is being punished for filing a complaint, it would be absurd to force them to file a brand new agency charge every single time the boss retaliates while they're already waiting in line.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell That would be a nightmare.
SPEAKER_00Right. So the court asks: are these new post-charge incidents carried out in the exact same manner as the original complaint?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And in this case they were. Her original complaint was about being stereotyped as too old to use technology. And her 2025 demotion was justified by management saying she wasn't adaptable with technology. Exactly. It's the exact same flavor of discrimination.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Precisely. Because the new acts were reasonably related to the core trip she was already taking with the agency, the court allowed the newer age and retaliation claims to proceed without a new charge.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I understand the legal mechanics of it, but stepping back, it feels incredibly unforgiving for an average person.
SPEAKER_00It really is.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell You're telling me an employee dealing with severe nerve pain, whose desk was just vandalized by her boss, has to have the presence of mind to perfectly check every single legal box on a government form without knowing what the future holds, or she loses her civil rights.
SPEAKER_00It is intensely unforgiving. From the court's view, they're managing a massive system and needs strict boundaries. But from your perspective on the ground, it means you cannot treat an agency intake form casually.
SPEAKER_01No kidding.
SPEAKER_00You have to treat your very first administrative complaint with the exact same level of precision and foresight as a federal lawsuit, because no judge is going to read between the lines for you later on.
SPEAKER_02Well, because she realized her
New York Election Of Remedies Trap
SPEAKER_02federal timeline was getting incredibly complicated, Calderon made a pivot. She tried to rely on New York State and New York City human rights laws to save her case.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell She did.
SPEAKER_02But that pivot triggered a completely different and arguably worse trap.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Ah, yes, the doctrine of election of remedies. Aaron Powell Okay.
SPEAKER_01What is this one?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell This is a strict jurisdictional bar unique to jurisdictions like New York. The rule fundamentally forces an employee to pick a lane and stay in it.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell And what are the lanes?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell You have two choices for state law claims. You can file a lawsuit directly in state court, or you can file a complaint with an administrative agency like the New York State Division of Human Rights.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Okay.
SPEAKER_00But the catch is if you choose the agency route and that agency investigates and it shows a finding of no probable cause, you are forever barred from taking those exact same state claims to a judge or a jury.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Wait, really? So by choosing the free, accessible agency route, she accidentally waived her right to a trial?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Yes. The history behind this rule is all about preventing double dipping. The legislature didn't want employees treating the agency like a practice round where if they lose, they just run over to the courthouse and try again.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell They want to conserve judicial resources.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus Exactly. So you will act your remedy.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Calderon's state and city claims for everything prior to December 2023 were completely dismissed by the federal judge because of this.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02And the tragic part is Calderon tried to argue to the federal judge hey, the agency investigation wasn't a fair trial. I didn't have a lawyer, I didn't get to cross-examine witnesses, it was just a shallow bureaucratic review. And the judge essentially said, I don't care.
SPEAKER_00Because under the election of remedies doctrine, fairness is totally irrelevant. The sheer act of choosing the forum is what locks you out. That's brutal. It is. The quality of the agency's investigation does not legally matter.
SPEAKER_02Here's where it gets really interesting, though. If the penalty for losing at the agency is a permanent ban from the courthouse, why on earth would anyone without a massive legal fund ever choose the agency route? How does someone weigh that option?
SPEAKER_00It is the most difficult strategic decision you face early on. Filing in court is high stakes, right? It takes years, costs tens of thousands of dollars, and involves brutal discovery processes.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00The agency route is free. You don't need a lawyer, and the state does the investigating. Many people choose the agency because it's the only access to justice they could afford.
SPEAKER_02Right. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00But the trade-off is finality. You are trading your right to a jury trial for speed and accessibility. And if the assigned investigator simply doesn't understand your case, your state claims die right there on their desk.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So let's look at the battlefield here. Her federal ADA and Title VII claims are dismissed for being premature. Her sex discrimination claim is dead because of a blank box. Her state claims are wiped out by the election of remedies trap.
SPEAKER_00Not looking good.
SPEAKER_02No. Columbia University's defense lawyers must be popping champagne at this point. But they forgot one massive loophole involving her supervisor, Tom Duong, and it actually ends up saving her
Suing The Supervisor And The 1981 Path
SPEAKER_02case.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Yes. This is where we get into individual liability and the concept of collateral estoppel.
SPEAKER_02First, clarify the individual liability part for us. We usually think of suing a company, not the specific middle manager. Can you actually sue Tom Duong personally for breaking into the desk and making menopause comments?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, you cannot sue an individual supervisor under Title VII or the ADA. Those federal statutes only apply to the employer entity. Okay. But there is an older federal civil rights statute called Section 1981, which specifically prohibits race and national origin discrimination in the making of contracts, which includes employment.
SPEAKER_02Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Under section 1981, you absolutely can sue the individuals who directly participated in the discrimination. You can also sue them personally under New York state and city laws if you haven't already trapped yourself with the election of remedies.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So Calderon has this surviving Section 1981 race discrimination claim against Tom Duong personally and against the university based on the retaliation. Right. Columbia's lawyers try to kill this claim too. They tell the federal judge, hey, the state agency already looked at the facts of this case and dismissed them, so you should block this federal claim using collateral estoppel.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Right. So collateral estoppel is the legal term for issue preclusion. In layman's terms, it means the federal court trusts the previous authorities' homework.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00If a legal issue was already fully decided by an agency, you can't force a new judge to litigate the exact same issue all over again.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Wait, I'm a bit confused. Didn't we just discuss
Collateral Estoppel And The Missing Record
SPEAKER_02the election of remedies rule, which blocked her state claims because she went to the agency? How is collateral estoppel different?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell This distinction is crucial. If we connect this to the bigger picture, election of remedies is a rigid statutory rule applied to state claims, where we establish that fairness does not matter.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Collateral estoppel is a common law rule applied to federal claims. And for this rule, fairness is entirely the point.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. For a federal judge to use collateral estoppel to block a section 1981 claim, the employer must prove that the employee had a full and fair opportunity to litigate at the agency level.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell So the judge has to ask: did she have a lawyer? Did she have the ability to demand documents? Could she call witnesses? Was there a real hearing or just a pay-per-review?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Exactly. The burden of proof shifts to the employer to prove the agency process was basically as rigorous as a trial.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And here is the spectacular twist where the Goliath University fumbles the bag. To prove she had a fair hearing, Columbia University's lawyers had to submit Calderon's complete administrative file to the federal judge.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell But they didn't do it.
SPEAKER_02Right. They handed over a Sparte's incomplete record. How does a massive institution with high-priced defense lawyers make a rookie paperwork mistake like that?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Honestly, it often boils down to administrative hubris or just sheer bureaucratic chaos.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Defense attorneys sometimes assume that a prior dismissal from a state agency is a silver bullet. They assume the federal judge will just glance at the no-probable cause finding and toss the case.
SPEAKER_02I see.
SPEAKER_00They underestimate the federal standard, which requires them to actually produce the transcripts, the evidence, and the investigative notes to prove it was a fair fight.
SPEAKER_02And the judge noticed. The judge specifically pointed out that Calderon filed her initial agency complaint pro se, meaning she didn't even have a lawyer at the time.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02So the judge looks at this and says, She had no lawyer. And Columbia didn't even bother to give me the paperwork to show she could present evidence. I have no proof this was a fair fight, so I am not blocking her claim.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02So synthesizing
Survival Rules And Final Warning
SPEAKER_02all of this for you, navigating this landscape requires incredible vigilance. If you find yourself facing an escalating pattern of retaliation, your survival really depends on three things.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what are they?
SPEAKER_02First, document the exact nature of the behavior, because courts look for patterns that match, just like Calderon's tech issues matched her later demotion. Second, be obsessively precise when filling out legal forms. Checking the right box is literally the difference between having a claim and having nothing.
SPEAKER_00And third, you have to be highly strategic about where you choose to fight. Rushing to a federal courthouse without jumping through the agency hoops will get you ejected. Right. But taking the fast free agency route can permanently lock you out of a jury trial for your state claims. You are always weighing the speed of bureaucracy against the permanence of the federal court.
SPEAKER_02It is a daunting system. But before we sign off, I want to pose one final question based on all the sources we reviewed. We spend so much time analyzing the blatant bad behavior of employers, the demotions, the stereotyping, the vandalism of a desk. But looking at Calderon's journey, what is the hidden threat here?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell I think the hidden threat is the administrative process itself. We have to wonder, is the sheer weight of bureaucratic delay actually doing the employer's dirty work for them? When a severely underfunded government agency, paralyzed by a federal shutdown, cannot issue a simple piece of paper? And that missing paper forces a federal judge to throw out a completely valid disability claim. I mean, is the system itself becoming a weapon against the employee? That really makes you think this is a sobering reality that anyone entering this arena must be prepared for. The process is the punishment just as much as the retaliation is.
SPEAKER_02It absolutely is. Protecting yourself at work is not about finding a clean x-ray. It is about managing a complex, chronic condition. It takes patience, impeccable record keeping, and a really clear understanding of the traps laid out in front of you. Thank you for joining us today. Keep your files organized, check your boxes carefully, and we will see you next time.