Male Karens existed back in 1911, as you will see in this article where a group of lawyers take a restaurant to court over the smell of onions.
Lawyers Obtain Injunction to Stop Cooking of Onions
An injunction against cooking onions has been issued at Des Moines, Ia., by Judge Degraff.
Lawyers in an office building complained that odors from cooking the onions in a restaurant nearby annoyed them.
The court gave the restaurant man three days to raise his chimney so the onion odors would be above the offices.
Source: The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 07 Sept. 1911.
The only reason they complained about the smell of onions wafting into their law offices was because it was an unseasonably hot September in Des Moines, and the sweat and resultant body odor emitted by men in heavy three-piece suits and shirts with tight celluloid collars in un-airconditioned offices, combined with the lingering malodorous stench of bitter clients and vengeful divorcees was already more than even the most youthful junior partner could bear. The strong odor of frying onions entering their already assaulted nostrils was simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Besides, it gave the lawyers in those long ago offices an opportunity to enjoy their favourite sport: suing others 😡⚖️
And let’s not forget how infrequently people would bathe. I think I would take the smell of onions over that of a junior partner.
Me, too! Nothing stinks up an office more than a know-it-all, over ambitious junior partner looking for the slightest pretext to try to push aside an elderly partner who put 45 years in with the firm, but isn’t quite as sharp as he used to be a few years ago.
The kind of guy who wears the same suits as the Big Guy,, spends his last dime to join the same country club and, when he can, chats up the secretaries, telling them how lucky they’d be if said “yes” to laying them.
Got to stop; gagging on my own words.