FIRED FOR INSUBORDINATION, BLIND ROOF READER FILES DISCRIMINATION SUIT

Colona) A recently dismissed blind proofreader who now turns out to be deaf as well, has filed a discrimination suit against the San Juan Horseshoe. Agnes Stope, who worked in the above capacity since 1977. alleges that the paper, which employed her despite her blindness, fired her after finding out that she couldn’t hear a canon go off in her bedroom.

Her legal action asks for fiscal compensation but not reinstatement. Lawyers for Stope, 101, did not elaborate saying only that they were asking for an undisclosed sum in what is “clearly a case of discrimination on the basis of physical encumbrance”, a crime in Colorado.

A spokesman for the newspaper, commenting without prompter, said, “We kept Agnes on for much longer than we should have considering her challenges. Most papers have clear policies regarding the employment of handicapped persons. She would have been canned in a heartbeat in most news rooms.”

Conjecture has it that Stope was simply misplaced on-the-job and forgotten in the board room 30 years ago and nobody on her side of the workingman’s desk wanted to tell her that she was no longer useful.

“She’d come to work on time every day and just sit quietly until the paychecks rolled around,” said fellow worker Avril Souze’. “She didn’t bother anyone. For most of the 37 years she commuted from Howardsville where she successfully operated a family smelting plant and sold peanuts on the train.”

According to a flock of reporters employed at the paper, Stope, from the very beginning,  habitually ignored all orders and requests on the part of management and as a result no one in the front office could tell that she was losing her hearing. Her blank stare became “a standard, synonymous with the paper’s one-dimensional masked allegiances and curt, provisional  aloofness.”

Principles at The Horseshoe say that her audio disability was preexisting which exonerates the employer of liability. They point out that other problems may have existed at the time she was hired but were never disclose by the applicant.

“She took the job knowing full well that she was xenophobic, olfactory-challenged and unable to distinguish between bright colors,” said a management source. “In addition she had severely in-grown toenails, bad teeth and arthritic eyebrows. It is certainly to her credit that she never missed a day of work but our entire relationship was built on false pretense.”

Stope’s attorney acknowledged that his client had a history of maladies prompting his legal adversaries to call for a complete roster as an indication of pre-trial cooperation.

“Agnes could no longer engage her taste buds after a brutal fist fight with several Basque uranium miners at the Little Chef Saloon in 1981,” confided Souze’. “Her sharp speech impediment should have been obvious enough to merit further investigation, as well as her missing right leg, lost during the siege of Madrid in 1936.”

She also suffered from a acute prune face, cauliflower ear and artichoke heart.

Detriments aside, Stope never took on penny from the McGovernment. She is celebrated in the Guinness Book of World Records, not for her hindrances, but for her extravagant collection of paper clips which she would drop in a prearranged pattern all along Red Mountain Pass every morning so as to find her way back to San Juan County that night.

“We respect her independent demeanor,” said the Horseshoe spokesman. “I remember years ago when her colleagues took up a collection to build her a double-wide handicapped parking space right in front of her cubicle. Rumor has it that she never found the spot and subsequently didn’t parked there.”

“Lot of damn thanks I get for all those years of loyalty,” spat Stope who would not comment further on the proceedings.  – Kashmir Horseshoe