She kicked the Darth haters to the curb.
Aggrieved UK worker Lorna Rooke was awarded almost $40,000 in compensation after being compared to Darth Vader — an analogy that litigators deemed “upsetting.”
“Darth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting,” employment judge Kathryn Ramsden declared during the employment tribunal, which took place in London, the Guardian reported.
Litigators deemed it harmful to be compared to the half-machine-half-human “Star Wars” baddie, who was known in the films for force-choking underlings who failed to carry out his orders.
This office space opera broke out in 2021 after Rooke, who worked for the National Health Service’s Blood and Transplant sector as a training and practice supervisor, was asked to take a “Star Wars”-themed psychological test as a team-building exercise.
The questionnaire had participants answer questions to gauge their level of introversion, level of intuition, whether they operated more on thoughts or feelings and how they perceived the world around them.
They were then compared to a “Star Wars” character — of which there were 16 options — who the company thought embodied these traits, the Guardian reported.
While depicted in the films as a planet-destroying Sith Lord, Darth Vader was described in the quiz as a “very focused individual” who could accelerate team synergy.
Rooke didn’t fill out the quiz herself as she had to take a personal phone call.
But when the blood donation worker returned, she discovered that a colleague had taken it on her behalf and announced that the boss was the psychological doppelgänger of Darth Vader.
Rooke found this comparison to the iconic villain — whose real name is Anakin Skywalker — highly unflattering and said it made her super unpopular at the workplace. She even cited as one of the reasons she left the job the following month.
While the tribunal agreed that the “Darth Vader Incident” affected how coworkers perceived her, they rejected her claim that it was the reason behind her resignation.
They ultimately ruled it a “detriment” — a legal term meaning harm or loss that someone suffers — and awarded her £28,989.61 ($38,729) in compensation.
This isn’t the first time an employee has been compensated over an unusual-seeming complaint.
In 2022, a Frenchman who was fired for being “too boring” was vindicated after a court ruled that his former company’s definition of “fun” — which involved excessive alcohol assumption and simulated sex acts — violated his rights.
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