The Berkshire mall in Pennsylvania made a minor splash (ha!) on the pages of Reddit recently with a video of a woman who fell into a mall fountain because she was an inattentive moron busily texting something no doubt extremely important while she was walking:
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Hear the laughter? That would be the security guards watching the footage, doing what EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING WHO HAS WATCHED THE VIDEO DID, laughing at the well-deserved misfortune of a person too wrapped up in their iPhone for their own good. Well, Cathy Cruz Marrero didn't like that very much. In fact being the butt of an internet joke got to poor Cathy Cruz Marrero SO much and she was SO traumatized by being an anonymous buffoon in a grainy security camera video that offered literally no way to identify her that she decided to come forward and show her face long enough to throw down a lawsuit for...embarrassment?
Didn't that one episode of The Office teach Cathy Cruz Marrero anything about admitting your follies and laughing at yourself? It's the quickest way to take all the thunder out of everyone wanting to make fun of you. But now instead of saying, "Whoops, yep. I'm an idiot. This is a lesson on why you shouldn't walk around glued to your Blackberry!" Cathy Cruz Marrero has put her face online fighting back tears and concocting a story about how she sat there, completely alone, maybe in the pitch black darkness and with a broken leg, sobbing "I'VE FALLEN! I'VE FALLEN!" And the security guards rushed to the edge of the fountain only to laugh and throw batteries at her head.
Except that never happened.
Watch the video again. She tumbles in, leaps to her feet, gathers her now useless phone, and trots out. The footage cuts off there so I guess it's possible she immediately collapsed BACK into the pool, but you'd think they'd keep that footage in for the sheer hilarity.
But now she's gotten some lawyer who I certainly wouldn't accuse of having no moral compass lest I somehow become a party to a lawsuit who has whispered in her traumatized ear, "Hey! This is AMERICA! They have no right to laugh at you just for being a moron! Let's SUE!" And she did. And the justice system being what it will, they will try to simply stir up enough public anger that the mall will fear a PR backlash and offer a settlement. And that will probably happen.
So enjoy your day in court, Cathy Cruz Marrero. My only hope is that by peppering your name in this blog it will work some SEO magic so that any time someone looks you up for a resume or something the first thing they'll see is hard video evidence of what a knuckle-headed whiner you are.
UPDATE!: Cathy DID get her day in court...to defend herself against charges that she allegedly helped a friend steal $4,000 from the jewelry store she worked at using another customer's account information (and another $1,000 on someone else's card at Target). This is probably unrelated to any motivation she might have to try and fleece a mall out of some hush money with a frivolous lawsuit.
Think I'm being too hard on her? Think the mall IS negligent? How many mall fountains have YOU fallen into? Wasn't that episode of The Office a good one? Let us know in the comments below!