While the rest of the world criticized and maligned a specific group of white women, Kyle and his brother-in-law saw a growth opportunity.

Listen to Kyle’s submission featured in Episode 56 of How Cool Is This? and read a transcript of the full episode below:

Kyle: Hello, my name is Kyle, and I'm actually pitching an idea that my brother-in-law Aaron came up with. It's a service called Hire- A-Karen, and it's a service where you hire a “Karen” to basically handle a dispute or some sort of confrontation on your behalf. So, say you want to dispute a charge on a credit card or you want to return something but maybe you're not necessarily a confrontational person. You can use the Hire-A-Karen service who will take your case for a fee and fight your battles for you. And that's my idea.. well, my brother-in- law’s idea. Thanks!

Leave us a voicemail @ 848-863-9917

to submit your idea to How Cool Is This?

Brian: All right… how cool is Hire-A-Karen?

Nick: I think this is a super cool idea for a variety of reasons. One, I'm not the most confrontational person in the world, so paying someone else to fight my battles doesn't seem like a bad idea. And two,maybe this can help rehabilitate the image of “Karens” worldwide if they help the marginalized people fight their battles instead of fighting marginalized people.

Brian: That is a very interesting take, especially the second one. I actually have always been a little hesitant to use that name, Karen. It's not a slur obviously, but it's not right when all dudes are pointing fingers at a woman and saying, “She's a Karen!” But... rehabilitating it is important because there is a reality where people are saying it.

Nick: But you do acknowledge that there's a certain type of person that seems to find grievances in places where they don't need to be.

Brian: Oh absolutely. I think it's cool to take something that has a negative connotation and give it a chance to be positive.

Nick: Let's play this out. So if you charge too much at your local coffee shop and you didn't have the confidence to say, “Oh, you actually charged me $4 more than I was supposed to be charged,” you could call up this ‘Karen,’ and she would come in and argue on your behalf to make sure you paid the right amount.

Brian: In some sense, the ‘Karen’ that we're talking about here is really just the legal system, where you hire a lawyer to fight your battle. But these are smaller battles, you know, the everyday injustice that bothers everybody, but it's not worth the time

Nick: We've normalized the practice of hiring lawyers and suing other people and corporations every time that we feel some sort of injustice. But dealing with those everyday injustices has always been a little bit more difficult, a little bit tricky.

Brian: I actually had a situation where I would have benefited from this service. My microphone broke about a month and a half ago, and I've had to do about 30 emails and six different phone calls to get it shipped. It's still going to the wrong address, and I'm very frustrated about it.

Nick: You would have saved so much mental energy and emotional labor by just paying a small fee to hire a “Karen” and get on the phone and yell at someone that works for Blue Microphones.

Brian: I do hope that nobody had to be yelled at, but part of the reason that this dragged on was because I wasn't willing to do any yelling.

Nick: But if yelling solves a problem, is yelling cool?

Brian: It's not cool to yell at anybody, but I think it's less cool to pussyfoot around it and then waste everybody's time.

Nick: Sometimes, depending on the problem, the means can justify the end.

Brian: And, it's always cool to create jobs.

Nick: Listen, in this economy, I think anybody that has the chance to work should jump at that opportunity.

Brian: I wonder if the best iteration of this would be some type of subscription model.

Nick: Right, yeah, you set up for Karen Pro, you have five different ‘Karen’ instances that you can have a month. I think that would be a great business model

Brian: Final question, how cool is it to submit somebody else’s idea?

Nick: As long as you have that person's permission, it is okay. What if someone hired a ‘Karen’ to submit an idea? Is that fair game?

Brian: I think I would have to tell the ‘Karen’ that the idea is cool for fear of retribution.

Nick: Right, and that's unfortunate because you know the ‘Karen’ will fight back.

Brian: Although we don't really give people the opportunity to fight back, so maybe we’d be fine.

Nick: That's one of the best things about this podcast.

For more information on the sociological considerations of this subject, consider reading The Atlantic’s article “The Mythology of Karen” shared in August 2020.

Listen to a 5 minute episode of How Cool Is This? on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you find podcasts.