So… I sued my employer — Part 2
Let’s get back in it!
If you’re new to this (and true to this), please check out Part 1 for some background information on how I got to Daylight in the first place. You can also check out the corresponding YouTube video for more context.
It could also be helpful to check out the NY Mag article — not a prereq by any means because we’ll get into some elements in this piece as well, but it is highly entertaining. Just saying.
So, let me set the stage. I just joined this highly queer organization, and I’m in love. The people I’m working with are amazing, legit the type of people that I’ve always hoped to work with. They were so smart, so effective and sooo mission-oriented, and most importantly, they weren’t just giving lip service; they were legit there to achieve this mission, and I was geeked to help them.
… And then there were MORE red flags that I just happened to ignore. Listen, it happens to the best of us.
The new Golden Child
So, it’s mid-February now, and I’m getting up to speed on where the product is.
As I recall, they were still in beta with maybe (strong, maybe) less than 100 people on the platform. I was trying to figure out the state of the Product department since there hadn’t been a defined Product person leading the team for several months. They were developing a feature that seemingly had been going on and on and on, but no one could tell me why. And my new boss, Rob, told me, amongst my other duties, that I needed to hire like 3 people by the end of March.
And my dumb ass was like, yeah, all this fine. 🙃
So, as I’m heads down trying to stop the bleeding and stabilize the team, and mind you, I was onboarding a new Associate PM and putting the other one on a performance improvement plan, I started to notice some other …. strange things.
So, I’ve become very familiar with being labeled the Golden Child when I first start at a company. Because I’m the type of person that will come in and add value right away, I will get shit done, and I’m not one to just kiss ass, and at first, Founders love it. They tend to not love it so much when I more or less say that their decisions don’t make sense.
BUT with Daylight this was the first time I could see the remnants of the previous Golden Child, their Head of Marketing, let’s call them Kelly. Remember, I had interviewed with Kelly, so I was already a fan. And during the first few weeks, Rob would mention all the time that Kelly managed to grow a waitlist of 100k users in 100 days.
But behind the scenes, it was clear that Kelly had used up their “usefulness”, and now I was the divine one.
The reason I say this is because, slowly but surely, hints kept being dropped that Kelly was underperforming and on a very specific walk during an NYC visit in March (which I will get to in a second), Rob even said that he was going to protect me from her because apparently there was an agreement made before me joining where one of Kelly’s team members was going to be allowed to move into Product Marketing under me, and Rob was against it.
It seems like he didn’t like this person, but instead of just letting them go, he would rather stunt their career and promise something only to snatch it back, which is just beyond shitty in my opinion. And to be clear, the ‘protecting me’ was that he wouldn’t let me be saddled by someone he didn’t like. But it was made clear through a number of conversations that if this person didn’t move over to Product Marketing under me, they would have no place on the Marketing team; surprise, surprise they were later part of the layoffs, but I digress.
So again, imagine me, new to the company, and hearing the CEO will protect me in any respect for anything. It felt amazing. I honestly was too blinded by that statement to dig further into why that was so problematic. I have rarely felt protected in my life, which is why I fight so hard to protect others, but that statement alone did what it was intended to do: get me fully on Rob Curtis’ team.
Remember that love bombing from Part 1? Yep, here’s just another aspect. It’s something they do to create/strengthen that bond.
Anyway, I was the new Golden Child, and I should have seen how he turned on Kelly was ultimately how he would turn on me in the upcoming months. But you know heifer be blind sometimes. 🙄
Fast forward to the NYC onsite I mentioned. So, out of the blue, Rob is like, why don’t you come to NYC? I’m going to be there, and we can meet up and hang out; then, it turned into a de facto leadership meeting because the Head of UXR and the Head of Engineering was also going to fly in.
But guess who wasn’t… Kelly.
I remember asking why she wasn’t going to be there, and I think the response was something to the effect that she couldn’t make it, but it was hella vague. I don’t know for sure, but I just feel like she wasn’t invited and made to feel left out.
WAIT! I forgot to mention!
Why was Rob visiting NYC, you ask?
Well, because he was living in Mexico at the time (and sounds like he still is …) because he didn’t have a US visa. This bit becomes important shortly.
The NYC onsite had a lot going on in those few days. There was a photoshoot, Rob and I interviewed a potential Head of Design and then walked to have dinner with the NYC team there.
That was a fucking. Long. Ass. Walk. And I was wearing new shoes that tore my feet up!
But I learned a lot on that walk.
Not only the bit about Kelly and how she was underperforming, which, by the way, is highly inappropriate. But also learned a ton about the previous Head of Product, and of course, it was all tilted to make me feel sorry for Rob. He said things like this previous Product person yelled at him and told him that he’d never make it or something like that, and again, I played all the way in, kind of just shocked.
Mind you, I knew this previous Product person. Having worked with them before, this did not sound like him AT ALL. But I hadn’t worked with him in years, so even though I was in shock, I took it all with a grain of salt since I was only getting one side of the story.
Dinner was had, and then a few of us returned to the hotel that most of the out-of-town folks were staying. I returned to my room to change my shoes into the hotel slippers because I couldn’t take one more step in those shoes, then met the rest of the folks on the rooftop.
So, it’s kinda cold; it is March in NYC, after all, but we’re outside chatting and somehow Rob drops another bomb on us. Like a very traumatic bomb. I also won’t share the details, but I’ll say it’s a really fucked up situation he just casually threw out.
And the 3 of us there seemed to be in complete shock again. Myself, the Head of Eng let’s call them Tracy and the Head of UXR let’s call them Elijah.
And then Rob continues to extend this traumatic experience into the fact that at that time as he was waiting for a visa, his life was a mess. And how bad it was for him and how he was barely holding on by a thread. Partly because his life was up in the air and partly because he couldn’t pay himself a salary the past year because he didn’t have a visa.
Even though I was a few margaritas in then, I remember thinking that waiting for a visa isn’t… that big of a deal. But you know what, to each their own.
And again, mind you, this was all UNPROMPTED. But this man started crying about it all. This grown 6’5” ish white man is crying over the fact that his visa process will take a few weeks, and he has to go back home to Australia in the meantime.
I remember chatting with Elijah after, and they were like I never imagined me having to rise up and wipe the tears from a 6-foot man. It was that unbelievable in hindsight.
But as he shared all this with us, we hugged this man! Lol. And we’re like, we just have to make it to June! Team June!! And we’re all like, we support you, we got you, don’t worry about it, as if this man was going off to war in the 40s to die.
And then he proceeded to get shitfaced before we all went to bed.
Now I call out this experience because not only is it highly strange and inappropriate, but it’s also another tactic that I feel narcissists use. Playing the victim and working on narratives to make people feel sorry for them. There’s no other reason to throw out that type of trauma other than to weaponize it somehow.
He was no victim (on that NYC rooftop). Not then, not now — no matter how much he wants to suggest that he is.
He was going to and did get back pay for a year, and while I’m not one to count another person’s coins, there were likely some other sketchy things that he got Daylight to pay for before and AFTER he secured his visa.
Even as the visa process continued and he went to Australia, this man was forever on vacation. Legit every other week between March and May, it seemed he had to take time off because things were just so hard for him. And we were all like, ok, take care of yourself, I guess.
So, let’s fast forward to the retreat. Not because there’s not a lot of other shit that happened, but because it pales in comparison to the retreat.
The Retreat
First off, the retreat was based at Rob’s house in Mexico, called Casa Do Ri Me. It’s a nice place, but not one for a retreat for like 20 people. If you can imagine, it’s essentially a big central living room that opened up the outside area, and then on the bottom floor was a pool and patio. He told me that this was the ‘Going away party” for the house because he and his partner would demolish it and develop it since his partner’s family were big real estate developers.
Luckily, we weren’t expected to sleep there as well, and there was a nice hotel a few mins away, further up on the mountain, where we all had separate rooms booked for us.
I missed the first day of the retreat because I was flying back from the Seychelles. Legit landed in Chicago Monday night and took another flight to Mexico that next Tuesday morning. So, while I missed Mondays and most of Tuesday’s festivities, I was there for the key shitshow.
Now, I must say, before I get into my experience at the infamous day, I do want to point out how, at the moment, things don’t always seem as bad as they are. My take is that I’ve grown up a survivor, as most people of color and queer folks have. So, our survivor instinct can sometimes focus us on how we need to get through an experience because if we were to identify all the harmful things that we were experiencing it would jeopardize our ability to navigate it safely.
I call this out because this clearly isn’t the first thing I’ve had to survive that has left me with trauma. But as I look back on my previous work experiences, I see different situations but the same survival techniques.
I don’t want you to discount something that happened to you just because you survived it.
Point blank is that we shouldn’t have to ‘survive’ work experiences, and we damn sure shouldn’t have to accumulate trauma for a paycheck. And yes, for the haters, surviving in today’s world is definitely different than it was 100 years ago, where someone’s life could be on the line, but in many ways, it still is. We’ve already seen two Black women DIE publicly at work. So, if someone tries to discount your lived experience, fuckem’. No company deserves your life.
Ok, back to it.
I won’t go into all the specifics of that day, but I’ll go into a few things.
The Infamous ‘Take Pride’ Sessions
I can’t remember at what point during the day this was, but at some point, our Head of HR, along with Elijah and maybe one other person, went up front to talk about this session that was really important to the Head of HR, let’s call them Stacy.
I honestly believe that Stacy thought this would be an empowering experience. Still, I think it came from a flawed premise because they had previously attended a Trauma Camp. I don’t know the details, but this was retold to me after Stacy had invited someone to this Trauma Camp. So, my hope and assumption are that their experience there brought some healing to them, and they had hoped for the same outcome with our group.
That being said, there are glaring differences between these two instances. I imagine that the trauma camp is a voluntary thing where you know in advance the types of experiences you’re opt-ing into, likely with strangers you might never have to see again.
VS being surprised with this request in front of coworkers that you may have just met for the first time and will have to continue to work with for the foreseeable future, and that also didn’t feel like an option.
In any case, they get up and explain the session. I heard from Elijah (also after the fact) that initially, this was supposed to be one big share, like the entire company sharing with each other 😬, but they managed to at least convince Stacy to have it in smaller groups. Thankful for small miracles and good leadership on Elijah’s part.
The session’s goal, as I remember it, was to take pride in something previously traumatic for you. Stacy gave an example that I don’t quite remember, honestly, but I do remember that it was a pretty personal experience that set the tone for the types of shares expected of everyone.
We got into small groups; I think I just kind of took over as leadership to get through the experience. I shared something that wasn’t overly traumatic but something that has stuck with me from the early days of my career: an experience at Redbox where I was in a meeting with a bunch of people, including the Design Director. As I speak about my project, he interrupts me and starts talking over me. So, I get a little louder to continue, and he gets louder, and I’m looking at him, and it’s almost as if he doesn’t see me; he legit looks through me. I look around the room, and the other women are giving me ‘I’m so sorry’ looks, but no one says anything. So I eventually say out loud, ok, I guess I’m going to stop speaking right now since it doesn’t matter.
That specific instance has probably shaped my life more than I care to admit. It not only triggers me deeply when I feel I’m not being heard, but it also is probably what has me use that voice that I finally found to protect others in a way those other women didn’t protect me. And while I don’t blame them because I know its more systemic than those individual women, but it was and still is unfortunate.
In any case, I shared that story as a way to hopefully bring a different level to the conversation we were supposed to have, but I honestly think the damage was already done.
In my small group, one person was so visibly disturbed by what was being asked of them that they were in a full-on panic, full-on shaking. Everyone else in the group went first, sharing stories of sacrificing food so their younger siblings could eat, of attempted suicide and tons of things in between. And when we came back to this one person, I eventually said they didn’t need to share. I think the experience alone of trying to figure out what to share with friends and strangers was already too much and I didn’t want to add more to what they were already feeling.
And then… we went into another session like what we all experienced wasn’t deeply disturbing. Not only were you prompted to share something personal, but you also had to listen while people shared all these deeply personally traumatic experiences with no prep or support on how to deal with it.
I distinctly remember being like, should I hug them or not? Would it make what they’re feeling worse? Will my role as VP make it worse? Like, what the fuck do I do now?
And I find out much later that other groups put on name tags with their trauma like what the entire fuck! Can you imagine walking around with a label: domestic abuse survivor?
Ya’ll, it’s still a hard thing to wrap my head around, I must say. But we powered on to the next thing.
I will end this part by saying I gave feedback multiple times on this session and how bad it was, and I was just met with not even disbelief but defensiveness and ambivalence. I recall Stacy saying that “I heard this was the best sessions of the whole retreat” and all I could think was doubtful. Just wait until they process this shit.
But my takeaway is that when things feel this off, I plan to take control and stop it even if it contradicts what is expected or remove myself from the situation and not engage.
The Pledge
The second thing I want to call out is “the pledge”. SO, I think this was the last day, and Rob wanted to end the sessions with like a closing presentation about the future of Daylight. This was like his Apple talk, his Ted Talk, like he was READY.
We were all squeezed in on these couches and listening to his rallying speech to get us to recommit to the quarter and what he wants to achieve. And then he talks about the future, where they would have Daylight babies …. Uh….
A colleague made a joke later, like, were we supposed to have babies with each other lol? Again, hindsight is 20/20 because clearly Rob knew he eventually wanted to go into fertility, which ended up being Daylight Grow, smh.
In addition to Daylight babies, Rob also mentioned a Daylight retirement community, which is what he told me they would build on the Casa Do Re Mi property.
And then he ends it all with a pledge that we each have to take to more or less recommit to him and Daylight and do everything possible in the next 64 days to blah blah blah OR no hard feelings and they would let that person go with a 2 weeks severance.
Even in the moment, I was like, um… this sounds very cult-like. I’m surprised glasses with some mystery juice hadn’t magically appeared by then.
The only other time I’ve heard of something like this was from another narcissistic boss. It was after I left their employment, but one of their employees told me they were essentially given a contract that they were expected to sign that pretty much said they were going to commit to this person. The PERSON, not even the role.
And I remember saying in disbelief, like a marriage contract?
Me taking on extra work
The last thing I want to call out is how deep in the sauce I was. I’ll clarify what I mean.
I’m the type of person who will always do extra if I feel like it needs to be done. Meaning I will take on extra work if it’s moving us all forward. My rationale is that while I can be excellent at my job, my job alone will not move the needle. We all need to be working together to move the boat forward, so it’s hard for me to stay in my lane; when I see an integral part of the boat stalled or sinking, I’ll jump in to steer it.
Founders love it ’til they don’t. Meaning ’til they realize that I take on a lot of responsibility, and ownership and more people look to me for things because I’ve essentially made myself hard to replace.
In any case, it hit me again at this retreat. I end up pulling Rob aside, and I express my concern to him that we were not going to get anywhere in the 64 days that were left because we didn’t know what we were trying to achieve and didn’t have a way to hold ourselves accountable. And this man lights UP!
He pulls me out of the house to a side yard that’s separate from everyone else and essentially starts telling me like thank you, this is something that I can’t do because of the feedback that I got (also problematic), but it would be really helpful if you could do it. Now, he doesn’t ask me specifically to do this work, but he asks more like what do you need for me to support you, as if me doing it was a done deal.
And I recall telling him I’m happy to do it, rally the peeps and get shit done, but it didn’t go well for me at the last place when I did that, so I’m hesitant to do that here. More or less, he was like I got your back.
So off I went with this plan to get things in order and whatnot.
Later that night at the ending party, where Rob had Drag Queen performances, a photo booth, and fireworks, I remember running into him and he introduced me to his partner/boyfriend/fiance/husband and he was like this is Brittany; she’s taking on organizing the company around goals, because I can’t, I mean … then mumbled something else. And I was like damn, I think I just got got! But I was a few margaritas in, so even though I had that thought, it was more of a curious thought than anything.
Outside of these problematic incidents, I must say the retreat was still very suspect. One of the biggest things that I walked away from that week with conscious thought vs unconscious thoughts (aka things that I would need to process wtf just happened to me), was that this feels very Trump-esque. Meaning that this man really just orchestrated this retreat at this house, with his staff, so that he could likely get Daylight to pay him a few stacks in ‘reimbursement’.
Because remember, flashback to March when he was crying on our shoulders about not getting paid for the last year and then wondering why are we all squeezing into his house for this thing? Particularly when there wasn’t proper food or water.
I found out later that people who needed water didn’t have access to any. People with food restrictions were left to eat asparagus for 3 days and, apparently, on the last day, told to order some pizza but not paid for by Daylight, out of their own pocket.
So yea, some people could call it a scam, a grift if you may. I’m not saying that, but it’s up to you to make your own judgements. There were probably work-place violations, but I’m not an HR expert by any means. Plus we were in Mexico, so who knows even if there were, if it applied.
Anyway, fast forward, we all get back to our normal day-to-day, but NOW I have this task of organizing the leaders, creating SMART goals, and introducing pivot points/dates, aka a date that if we’re off track, we can make a pivot.
Got the team aligned and ready to go and got MAD praise for it. This must be mid-April by this point. Got praise from Rob and the other leaders in the org. All was gravy.
Then Rob introduces the need for a Product strategy doc. Also, Elijah goes on leave for a few weeks, and I step in as a manager for their reports.
And this is where the switch gets flipped, and I am no longer the golden child, and it’s a slap in the face.
Before I tell you what happened, here’s what I think happened behind the scenes. I think the Founders finally heard from the board that the “bank” aka the financial technology was not going to make it as a business.
Ya’ll, my bad; so much was happening that I almost forgot to mention a key element. Remember, I was only with Daylight from Jan 31st to June 13th, but during the first half of that tenure, it became evident that they had signed a beyond shitty deal with a key partner, their Banking-as-a-Service provider.
This is important because this deal determines how much money they get paid every time a Daylight user swipes their card, and at this point was their only source of income. Well, this deal was soooo hyper specific, and all credit goes to the Head of Partnerships that identified this first. The deal was that Daylight would only get paid for something like non-pin debit card transactions, so essentially, any time a user would try and use their card as credit was the only time they’d get paid. Which would have been likely nearly never.
Not only did the Head of Partnerships bring it up, but I also brought it up to each founder at least once and probably to Paul, who I interacted with the most, more than once. From my previous experience with BaaS-es it was clear to me that they were DOA, ie.there was no way to make any money with that deal, but they weren’t concerned about it 🙄; they just cared about user growth (this was probably feedback from investors but still you couldn’t ‘grow’ your way out of a bad deal).
And to be clear, there’s no way to make money on just interchange (aka getting paid when a user swipes their card) which is why a ton of digital banks that got started in 2020 closed (or got “acquired” …. essentially after they failed) …. Including all the previous digital banks I worked for.
So back to my perception of what was happening behind the scenes, I think it became clear the “bank” would not succeed after the retreat. Instead of being honest with the team, they decided they needed to pivot to something they determined would make them money. (I call this out because they refused to use/listen the research done by Elijah and their team as to what users wanted and what was reasonable for them, and instead thought they knew better…. But we saw what happened there — they failed, but I digress)
So yea, they decided to be shady and BURN everyone in the process.
Why, you ask? I honestly don’t know, but as I recount what happened to me next, there’s no other logical reason in my mind because it was all unnecessary (especially after what I found out MUCH later — I will delve into in Part 3)
Ok, I’m back on track now, so shady shit is happening behind the scenes, in my opinion, but I’m tasked with creating this product strategy doc (to nowhere). Rob shares a template he wants me to fill out. Oh, mind you, he’s in Australia at this point, so it’s weird working hrs for him.
So I spend some time working on this and share it, and his initial reaction is oh, this is good it’s going in the right direction and then I apparently make the ill-fated decision to ask what percentage of completion did he feel the doc was and then he switched it up and told me actually it’s not that good and its only like 30% complete and I was like ooohhh… that’s not the impression that I got from his first response.
As I start to dig into what the feedback is, or what he wants changed, it begun to change every day. One moment it’s that the strategy isn’t a strategy, and I was like, well, I’m using this well-known structure of building the Product Strategy from the Company Strategy (as one does), but there was no Company Strategy defined, just a set of KPIs.
Still, I do the best I can with what I’m given and used those KPIs as a base and linked this framework I used from Ravi Mehta, who posted it on Reforge, a well-known and highly respected Product leader and resource.
And his response ya’ll?
He was like well, you can find anything on the internet from some rando.
Like what sir?
Ravi Mehta, product leader from TripAdvisor, Facebook and formerly CPO of Tinder … a rando?
THEN I realized he had a different definition of what strategy meant because he kept referencing numbers that he felt I was missing, and so I tried to ask him what was his definition of a strategy and this man was like I mean if you don’t know I don’t know what to tell you.
Again, heavy side eye here.
Hint I don’t think he knew what a strategy was, hence, the Company Strategy being a set of KPIs. But instead he chose to gaslight me instead.
He’s like this strategy is missing the Jobs to be Done (a popular framework used to prioritize user problems) and to me thats what too low level to be in a strategy doc, but ok so I add them, and then he has a problem with the format and then when I change them, he’s like don’t worry about that you have other things to focus on.
WTF.
Like clearly I can’t win. And so you might be thinking, why are you trying so hard. Well, because he had told me that I wasn’t performing at a VP of Product level (gaslighting me), and that hit me in the way he knew it would.
As a high achiever, it’s what I do. I achieve and my quality level is really important to me, you can ask some of the people who worked for me how annoying I can get sometimes (also my bad ya’ll).
And unfortunately, I took this to my coach, and without me being able to see clearly the red flags and all these narcissistic tell-tale signs, we took that feedback at face value and really dove into how to perform at this level. Literally creating a plan and everything.
I had worked for a narcissistic boss that had me questioning my identity before, so I knew to avoid that piece, but I still got sucked into the chaos. This man had me legit thinking I was crazy for thinking that a strategy was more than just metrics. But again, I learned what not to do next time.
At the same time, as I was covering for Elijah being out on leave, Rob was coming after their reports doing similar things. And let me tell you, Elijah had a BAD ASS team. Those folks were top of their game. So, when he was coming at them with the same shit, he came to me to cosign on his bullshit and I wouldn’t and out came another tell-tale tactic of narcissists, the alienation because I defied him.
Slowly but surely, my 1–1s got cancelled, or last minute he couldn’t attend because of an “investor call” even though they weren’t fundraising or anything, they had just closed a Series A round a few months prior. He also just wouldn’t respond to my slacks. Just straight-up cold shoulder.
Then, I essentially got demoted because he broke my dev team into two and put my underperforming PM that I have been sharing concerns about for the last month or so, as my peer leading one team while I led the other.
They were his new golden child, and even though they didn’t produce anything the entire time I managed them, they could do no wrong in his eyes. Even to the point where one day, they reached out to me because they were onsite in NYC with Rob at this point and Rob apparently told them to help me because I was overwhelmed, or I needed help or something and I legit laughed in their virtual face (this was via slack). I tried to play it off like oh, it’s the end of the day, and I’m a bit out of it, but by this point, I knew what was coming.
Some other quick tib bits.
Rob told me there would be layoffs a few weeks before it happened, so I wasn’t surprised. I’m sure he wasn’t supposed to share that with me, but he has a habit of sharing things with people he shouldn’t.
This PM (not to be confused with the Associate I enjoyed working with from Part 1) apparently had several HR cases opened against them, but I was never made aware.
I know he was shit-talking me by this point because a few people told me about it, again, that nasty habit of sharing things with people that he shouldn’t.
In March (I think), we were asked to create a budget for the year and Rob made it clear to add all the people and resources we thought we might need to achieve the goals set in front of us. So, we all asked for a wishlist. Then, by end of April, the tone shifted to how dare you all ask for all of these people. I even hired a Product Operations person who they wanted to renege on their offer!
Somewhere in those 2 months, I’m guessing math was brought up because I remember Billie coming into an LT meeting telling us that because of these budgets, we’d be spending $1M a month, and we had to cut it drastically.
And I was like, ok… did ya’ll forget you asked for the wishlist here? Rob even harassed Kelly, the Head of Marketing, because she didn’t have enough people on her team. He wanted a 10-person Marketing team and she was being “too conservative”. The man was delusional.
Rob tried to humiliate me (and probably others) in our LT meeting by asking which of the LT used the card regularly, and I didn’t raise my hand because I didn’t. They hadn’t built a way for you to get money out of the bank, so no I wasn’t going to get my shit locked up in it and I said as much. I had money in the account to test functionality, but I wouldn’t put my full paycheck in there.
When he saw that I didn’t raise my hand, it was like, well it’s a problem if the Head of Product doesn’t blah blah blah, and now I think I’m going to have to start tracking everyone in the company on their usage. 👀
Mind you, this man was NOT a US citizen, nor did he have a visa for the longest time, but somehow, he had access to a Daylight account. Not a shared account, but one somehow registered to him, which is strange because I’m pretty sure it’s against the law (you literally had to submit an SSN, but he didn’t have one as far as I could tell…. So…). But that’s not for me to figure out, that’s for the authorities.
The founders organized an “LT offsite” but coincidentally without me or Elijah, since we were personas non grata at that point aka about to be fired. Oh, any by this point, they had fired Kelly, the Head of Marketing, and demoted the Head of Partnerships. But they also weren’t smart because it was clear there was an LT offsite; it was on their calendars, and that’s how I knew WHEN the layoffs were going to happen because of the timing of those conversations.
Then a group of us that were in the know, formed a group (that no longer exists) and shared information about what we knew, and I can’t tell you how transformative that group was for me. That was the truest form of community I’ve felt for a long time.
Not only were we sharing the slices of information we knew separately, it created this fuller picture of what we were dealing with. And with that knowledge came power.
And quite frankly, it made me realize how shitty the workplace has become because we’ve been socialized to not trust each other or share what we know. But because I trusted one person and they trusted another, the group ended up being really massive; it was most of the org at some point!
And we were all there for each other when D-day happened…. Which I recorded. I may play some excerpts in the corresponding YT video.
And that experience alone gave me an idea for a business, but we can talk about that another time if you’re interested.
In any case, some ending questions.
My first trolling comment!
LOL. I always say: “If you can’t win at the lottery, sue your employer!” It’s like winning the lottery, and you have a better chance of getting a payout. It’s so nice to know there are still desperate and ruthless people in the world willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck. Good luck, my dear.
This comment on my So I sued my employer Part 1 YouTube video made me laugh because they clearly didn’t watch the video AT ALL, but somehow the title triggered them. And if they needed to go to a stranger’s comment. section to post about something they didn’t consume before I even finished the story, they must have a sad, sad life, and if this is their only point of joy, then by all means, look stupid in front of the world. Don’t let me stop you, friend.
BUT this made me realize that I didn’t share what I planned on doing with any potential settlement.
So, my whole goal with this lawsuit (which I will get into in Part 3) was to give the majority of whatever I got to the people I felt were taken advantage of by Daylight. There was a set of 3 particular people that I wanted to gift the money to, over the course of the year it ended up dwindling down to 1 person, but it was my intention until the very end to still give them that money in a way that wouldn’t fuck them over tax time.
So no, this wasn’t for me. I wasn’t taking this risk for my own benefit; it was legit to stand up for the folks who wanted to but weren’t able to. And I let everyone know that this was my intention along the way.
Aren’t you afraid that other employers won’t hire you?
Kinda, honestly. That is absolutely the risk that we took when we decided to take this all public. But in the end, I look at it in two ways.
- I’ve learned a lot about the types of employers I DON’T want to work with, so I’m more discerning and will leave at the 1st sight of some fuck-shit.
- If the employer isn’t shitty then they don’t have to worry. I’ve worked for a few different clients and currently have a full-time job since my layoff from Daylight. They don’t have to worry about me airing their dirty laundry because they aren’t shitty people, and my experience with them hasn’t necessitated deep therapy. Simple as that. Don’t be shitty, and there would be nothing to expose.
Alright, closing things up, this was a long one. I’m sorry, but as you can see, there’s just A LOT here. But in Part 3, the conclusion, I’ll get into what happened the day of the layoffs, what happened right after, the legal complaint, the NY Mag article and the settlement.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to message me, I’d love to hear from you. If you’re interested in the companion video, here it is!
