A classic “Karen” has been sacked after footage of her excuse for coughing on supermarket customers went viral on social media.
A “Karen” who was filmed deliberately coughing on shoppers inside a supermarket has been sacked after footage of her vile act went viral.
The shopper, later identified as Janene Hoskovec, was shown approaching several customers inside a Super Saver supermarket in the US midwestern state of Nebraska on September 7.
Ms Hoskovec was filmed barging towards a woman unnecessarily while audibly coughing in her direction, saying, “excuse me, I’m coming through”.
In the video, she smiled while open-mouth coughing towards the group, before telling them they were “cute” for wearing masks.
The Twitter user that shared the video said his mum filmed the distressing encounter, which involved Ms Hoskovec following the group through the store.
He said even after a store employee told Ms Hoskovec to stop, she continued to torment them.
Ms Hoskovec told the group she wasn’t wearing a mask because she didn’t “need one”, and argued they didn’t need to be wearing one either.
After calling them “sheep”, she approached them to cough in their direction again while laughing and claiming that she had “allergies”.
Viewers of the video, which has been viewed millions of times on Twitter, managed to find out not only her identity, but also that she worked for IT company SAP as a client partner.
Once the company, based in the US state of Arizona, caught wind of her disgusting act, it announced that she had been let go.
“The health and safety of our employees and the communities in which we live and work are of utmost concern to us. We are taking the matter of an SAP employee incident very seriously and (are) investigating the situation,” a tweet from the company read.
In an update shared later, it said after reviewing the incident it could “confirm that the individual in question no longer works for SAP”.
Close to 8000 people responded to the video, lambasting the woman over the unnecessary confrontation.
“I don’t condone violence but if someone coughed on me like that we’re both going to jail,” one person responded.
“She made a point of being physically aggressive, to frighten and deliberately expose them to whatever bugs she might have had,” another wrote.
There was a similar case inside a Florida supermarket earlier this year which resulted in the offending woman being sentenced to 30 days in jail and a six-month probation period.
She was also ordered to pay $500 ($A670) and the costs of her victim’s Covid tests.
It’s unclear if Ms Hoskovec will face criminal charges.
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