AI: my unexpected ally against a giant

 

You are not alone.

I know it feels that way. It felt that way for me.

Companies like Hershey count on that feeling. They count on you not knowing your rights. Not knowing your deadlines. Not knowing how to fight back. They have entire law firms on speed dial for exactly that moment when someone like you decides to push back.

Most people don't push back. They take what they're given and move on. I almost did.

Then I found something.

Artificial intelligence — ChatGPT and Claude — can help you understand the law. Build your case. Write your documents. Think through your strategy. At two in the morning. For free. On your phone.

I used these tools to file my own case in federal court against one of the most recognizable companies in the world. Pro Se. No attorney. No money. Just the tools anybody can access.

This book is going to show you exactly how I did it. So you can do it too.

Because the fight isn't over just because you can't afford a lawyer.

They have lawyers.
You have AI.
If you find this helpful, share it with someone who thinks they are alone.

 

ClickChapter 1: This Is How It Started

This is why I had to file my own case in Kansas Federal Court.

Pro Se.

Case No. 2:25-cv-02682-JWB-TJJ

I worked for The Hershey Company at their facility in Edgerton, Kansas. It was the plant that produces Dot's Pretzels.

Like most jobs I'd had in my life, the idea was simple: show up, do the work, go home at the end of the shift. I wasn't looking for a fight with Hershey. I was just trying to do my job.

But one day something happened that set everything in motion. And once it started, there was no turning back.

I already had documented foot neuropathy. The shifts were twelve hours long. In their own training videos, Hershey made it clear — they were responsible for providing rubber safety mats, and workers who needed them could request one. It said it right there in their own materials: if you need one, just ask.

Those mats were readily available in the production area. The same mats we stood on every night when the line was running. When the line was shut down, they were still there — lying on the floor, protecting nobody.

But every twenty-seven days, the production area would shut down for mandatory sanitation. When that happened, many of us were reassigned to the warehouse.

The warehouse floors were solid concrete. The mats we normally stood on were sitting just fifty feet away, protecting no one. The shifts were still twelve hours long.

So I asked for a mat. Just like the training video said to do.

Lee Timmons said no.

No explanation. Just no. Despite what the training video said. Despite what Hershey's own safety policies required.

He chose to refuse.

So I spent twelve hours on the dock floor. Standing on solid concrete with a documented neuropathy condition, while the rubber mats I needed lay fifty feet away doing nothing.

When I got home that morning I asked my wife to take a picture of the bottom of my foot. There it was — a small, pimple-sized blister. I didn't think too much of it. It was small. But I knew I had to report it.

It was the start of my three-day weekend. When it was time to go back, the first thing I did was head for the managers' office. It was a group office — all the production managers and leads. My manager and lead were in there. So was Lee Timmons.

I was reporting my injury to my direct manager and lead. Out of nowhere, Lee jumped all over it.

For about forty minutes, he tried to manipulate my statement. His goal was to make me say my injury was the result of my neuropathy — not his decision to deny me a mat. I kept telling him my injury was caused by his choice to make me stand on concrete when the mats were right there. He kept pushing me to reword it. To blame myself. He knew my condition, and he had still refused to let me use a mat lying on a floor fifty feet away protecting no one.

It felt like an interrogation. Like I was on The First 48. The only thing that mattered was Lee Timmons' version of the truth.

After about forty minutes I told him I was done talking to him. He kept going. I refused to respond. He eventually dismissed me.

Lee was a retired Marine. A major. Claimed to have been an intelligence officer. He ruled that facility through intimidation. But I never laid down for him. I'm thinking that pissed him off. I was the old white guy he couldn't push around. He was going to break me one way or another.

I left his office believing I had done what I was supposed to do.

A few days later I went back to Lee and asked when they were sending me to a doctor.

He told me there was no doctor appointment. Because I had said my injury was my neuropathy.

That was a bold-faced lie.

I reported this to the HR lead at the facility. She said the report showed my injury as neuropathy — not work-related — and that I had stated that myself. I told her that was a lie. She said she would look into it. I never heard about it again.

Over the next couple of months I limped around. The small blister grew worse. It developed into a full-blown, rotting, ulcerated wound. My manager and lead tried to protect me — they avoided assigning me to the one workstation that didn't have a rubber mat. But when they weren't there, Lee Timmons made sure I ended up at that one spot.

That spot had a large window looking directly into it. Lee would stand in the office and watch me limp. Watch me suffer. Proud of himself.

That one spot was actually the easiest job on the line. People wanted it. Work at your own pace, no line to keep up with, a one-person job. There were fifteen to twenty other people he could have assigned there. He put me there. And he watched.

We argued several times about the reclassified injury and the refusal to get me treatment.

Eventually the head of safety spoke to me on a video conference. I mentioned the training video showing that mat requests were Hershey's responsibility to fulfill. He argued that the videos said no such thing. Then he ordered me to a forklift job. A stand-up forklift. He never looked at my foot. Never sent me to be examined. He just put me on a machine that required me to stand and operate with the very foot that was rotting.

That only made it worse. The pain destroyed my ability to focus. I had three accidents in the next three weeks. I should never have been put there. That was their decision. They made it knowing what they knew.

 

* * *

 

That is the story discovery will prove. The story I will be sharing with a jury.

But it is not the main story this book is about.

This book is about defending yourself from companies that hurt you — and hurt you, and hurt you — without consequences. Hershey hurt me worse than anything that has ever hurt me before. And when I tried to fight back, the first obstacle wasn't Hershey.

It was my own lawyer.

Roger Fincher was my workers' compensation attorney. From the time I hired him, I asked him — over and over — about suing Hershey for everything they had done. The ADA violations. The safety failures. The fraud on that injury report. The retaliation.

In an email I have, Roger himself documented that I asked him eighty-five times about pursuing those claims.

Every single time, he told me the same thing: I had nothing but workers' comp claims.

What I didn't know was that I had a 300-day deadline to file those other claims. I knew nothing about that timeline. I relied on my attorney's legal advice — as anyone would. And while I was relying on him, the clock was running out.

It was 420 days from the time I hired Roger Fincher before I even received the workers' comp doctor's report. Several months more before we settled. By then, every deadline had passed.

He killed my timelines.

At one point he told me Hershey was willing to throw in an extra three thousand dollars if I agreed to drop everything else.

Three thousand dollars. To walk away from all of it.

I've thought about that offer many times since. And I keep coming back to the same question.

Who was he working for?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.

 

 

Chapter 2: AI to the Rescue
It took about three months after my termination for my foot to heal enough that I could go back to work without fear of it breaking down again. When I did, I went to work at a state hospital.
This particular hospital had three nurse managers who made the workplace miserable. Yelling at staff. Verbally abusive. Just pure hateful.
Then something happened that set them on me.
A fellow employee accidentally put my jacket on when he went to break. While he was out he reached into his pants pocket for his car keys and put them in my jacket pocket without thinking. When I went home I took his keys with me. Completely by accident. I got a call from a nurse asking if I had them. I checked my pockets. I had them. I was already home but I drove back and returned them. Everything was fine.
A few days later I went to ask one of the nurse managers a question. She was finishing a staff meeting. I waited until it was over and asked her if she had seen my jacket — I had accidentally left it there.
She started screaming at me about stealing keys.
In front of her entire staff.
I walked away. She ordered me to come back. I kept walking.
She knew exactly what had happened. She knew this man had made an honest mistake putting his keys in my pocket. But here she was — calling me a thief in front of her nurses. My shift was over. I went home pissed off and humiliated.
When I came back to work that night I told my coworkers what happened. I told them I was going to file an incident report.
One of them told me it wouldn't matter. These three managers were tight with the head nursing manager — the one who reviewed complaints against nurses. Complaints against her people had a way of disappearing.
I'm a 58-year-old country boy. So I sat down and wrote my complaint out in my own words. I showed it to one of the nurses on my crew.
That's where the magic started.
She pulled up ChatGPT on the computer and copy-pasted my complaint into it.
What came back was a work of art. Professionally written. Precise. Everything I had said — but in a language the system couldn't ignore.
I sent it in. 

After about a week I had heard nothing. I assumed it was just another sweep-it-under-the-rug situation. So I wrote another complaint.

This time the head nursing manager’s assistant came and spoke to me. She told me the issue had already been addressed and that there was no need for any more written complaints.

I walked away feeling satisfied. They understood something now — I wasn’t scared of them. I wasn’t going to lay down.

At that point I had already filed harassment reports on two different nurses. Nothing had ever been done about those. But after the complaints, they stopped messing with me. When they did speak to me, they were careful to keep it respectful.

I thought the situation was over.

I was wrong.

A few days later the head nurse called me into her office. When I walked in, the two nurses I had previously filed complaints against were already sitting there.

It was an ambush.

The nurse who had called me a thief told her version of the story. She talked for five minutes or more. The second nurse never said a word.

When it was my turn to speak, I got maybe five words out before the head nurse cut me off.

It was obvious the decision had already been made.

Nothing they had done was wrong.

I left.

I went home and started talking to my two AI buddies.

I told them everything that had happened. They started asking questions. I answered them one by one. And with every question they asked, the complaint got stronger.

Why was the head nurse confronting me in front of the two nurses I had filed complaints about?

Why wasn’t I given the opportunity to have my union representative present?

Why was the meeting structured in a way that prevented me from even responding?

Piece by piece, the AI helped turn my story into something the system couldn’t ignore.

It helped me write my new complaint about the head nurse. But with a twist.

It told me to CC a copy to the facility HR director as well as the head of HR, challenging them to audit the last three years of complaints against these nurses.

The final result?

The head nurse lost her job.

And those two nurse managers never confronted me

again.

 

I started playing around. Testing it.

I make wooden bowls. I'm not great yet. But I'm learning.

I took a picture of one of my bowls and asked AI what it saw.

The first thing it noticed was the wood grain. The grain runs in smooth circular patterns, which means the blank was centered well when it was turned. It correctly identified the wood as walnut — a popular choice for bowl turning because of its strength and the deep chocolate color that develops when it is finished.

It pointed out the proportions. The bowl has a thick body with a slightly stepped lid, which gives it a solid, balanced look. The knob is small and clean, which keeps it from overpowering the piece. The finish is smooth and reflective, which tells you the sanding was done carefully. There are still a few small tool marks visible under the light — but that is normal for someone still learning.

What impressed me most was something I hadn't noticed myself.

It told me the grain pattern adds character to the piece. Instead of being perfectly uniform, the darker streaks make the bowl look natural and handmade. The imperfections are part of the story of the wood.

For someone still learning, it said, this bowl shows good control, good proportions, and patience in finishing. Based on similar handmade walnut bowls sold at craft shows and online marketplaces, a piece like this would likely sell somewhere between sixty and one hundred twenty dollars depending on size, finish quality, and market.

It was right. It was walnut. It saw the flaws. It gave me a value.

I was impressed.

Then I took it further. I started taking screenshots off Facebook and other social media — stories people share, claims that get passed around — and asking AI if they were true or false.

It didn't disappoint.

I was sold.

This thing isn't just a legal tool. It isn't just for people in a fight. It is a thinking partner for anyone willing to use it. Point it at anything and it goes to work.