The day Dawntanya Smith became an internet sensation started as a normal day.
Then came the Kirkwood Karen.
Smith supervises a post office in Kirkwood. One day in August, a middle-aged female customer approached her window and asked if Smith could help her obtain her mail from a PO box at another post office. The woman asked Smith to call the other post office and have them give her the key — something Smith couldn’t do.
At first, Smith says the customer was nice and cordial. She didn’t raise a fuss when Smith declined her request, but she did say something negative about herself, Smith recalls, which signaled to Smith that something wasn’t all quite right.
A postal worker for 10 years, Smith says she always tries to be nice to people. “I like people, and people can have bad days.” So she walked the woman out of the post office and told her everything would be OK, that “the sun is going to shine.”