My phone rings as I'm walking to HomeState to grab two burritos Blanco and a cappuccino from Blue Bottle. I walked past a gigantic Kaws statue, and a garage painted by Kenny Scharf and Aaron de la Cruz. I think to myself, "You're cheesy bro. Your life's a cliche right now. Life's good."
I answered the phone because it's a recruiter that has been calling about new opportunities. He says, "Have you heard of lululemon?". Trying not to chuckle, I reply "Yes." Up until that point I had only really seen the brand on women's buttocks but I knew they had something to do with Yoga.
"They're looking to expand into the United States and they're looking for someone to handle all of the groundwork" he replies excitedly.
As I think of my burritos with freshly made tortilla de harina and well rationed foamy coffee I tell him to sign me up and let's get some interviews going. After a few set of rounds of interviews with what we will call the "main characters" I was in. I thought I was the man for the job, and they did too.
Before I take you into the great depths of Al's mind it's important to note that this isn't the first time I caught them running game on me, but it is the first time where a sequence of events caused me to create a formal complaint about the situation.
You see, I can pinpoint the exact start of aggression by lululemon to the day I met the "gatekeeper" Tessa Borsoi. Only a visitor to the office, she acted with such grandeur and higher decree than Sun Choe.
Let's take a look into the organizational structure at this given time of several departments. As Method Man cleverly stated "When my mind start to clickin', And the strategy is mastered, the plot thicken."
My lack of character development is stunted by my ability to not let my biases interfere with my words, but establishing each of these individuals provides context as to what is to follow.
The infamous "Facilities" gang.
After formally raising the complaint, only a week would go by before my first time getting called to the principal’s office would occur. None of my actions or behavior had raised any concerns after more than a year working for lululemon, but somehow asking for an explanation as to why it was tolerable that a colleague of ours kept wasting our time while I struggled to keep up with office functions across both locations had pushed whatever threshold was existent.
By this point, I was very seasoned as to how Tessa and her squad magically made items disappear. My colleagues Matthew Lantin or DJ Paringit would establish a work order for me to perform around a certain area (usually involving a blind spot from a camera positioning), then Facilities would involve a vendor assisting in that particular work order to help make objects vanish, typically the cleaning one or their own receptionists.
It was fairly fool proof. Even though there wouldn’t be any direct evidence of me taking an item, as they rotated vendors and consequently people — the law of deduction would imply I was behind each theft.
For a billion dollar company to simply allow behavior like this to go unnoticed for months on end when the rings of retail theft get cracked down in matters of weeks seemed oddly suspicious. My meeting with Amber Lott would result in her siding with Peter Bzowski that I was in the wrong to be upset that a third appointment was missed by his scheduled vendor to perform one of these work orders for none other than the Chief Product Officer, or one of the second highest ranking members of the organization.
Ultimately it was clear that it was it wasn’t a “me versus them mentality, but rather a them versus me approach.”
I had managed to open a line of communication with Kelly Burkinshaw from my own employer, TEKSystems, regarding what was happening at a local level, but no one from the lululemon side was involved until Amber Lott took the bait and decided she wanted to call me out on my alleged behavior towards the Facilities department. At that point, PNC, or their People and Culture department had to get involved.
She was smart and branded it as a racial complaint rather than presenting it for what it was: a horror story involving a large group of their organization banded together to create a filtering system into their workplace. After admitting the importance of providing the work requested by executives - it only seemed foolish to come out in defense of the perpetrators to try to justify their actions.
My role with the Product team, Sun's team, was largely made redundant after who knows how many people got victimized or decided to play into their game. The printing fiasco at Main St. was one of the clearest attempts to begin making my role obsolete with the Brand team. Led by Nikki Neuburger and Deborah Hyun - they would facilitate my participation into their office functions to expose me into their respective offices time after time again.
I was seeing Nikki eye to eye, helping her address problems, and somehow she thought it was all a mistake that I stood next to her. It doesn't surprise me that people who have had everything served on a silver platter are incapable of distinguishing the character of individuals that don't match their skin tone, but what specially triggers me is that people like her had copped out the hood just a few years prior, and now they wanted to reshape its history like it never existed.
They like the culture, but not the people. There's a special term for people like that: culture vultures. Using street narratives to advance profitability to match their "Power of Three" objectives. As Kendrick Lamar said: Not like us.
These treacherous human beings murdered the Creative Director. It's all my mind could conjure after seeing everything develop in front of my eyes. My last time seeing him would be in the bathroom at 1733 Ocean Avenue, their favorite location to target me at, looking perplexed and agitated. Something felt off, so I didn't even bother to greet him and left looking just as bewildered as he did.
I knew he had been a target for some time, but I easily dodged Matt's and DJ's requests to perform any work around his area by being creative in my approach. Their newly temporary receptionist from Main St. constantly wanted me to deliver his newspaper and I complied, but instead of leaving it in his office I simply would leave it at his Executive Assistant's desk, Caroline Naylor. After all, that was her responsibility.
Unlike most of the bots at the office, he and I had struck up a conversation several times, and if they did manage to successfully infiltrate his work area, I'm sure he knew the equation didn't add up.
After screaming for help for several months, by this point it was clear help was never arriving. I was alone in this. Solo, solito. Using contractors to selectively choose their employees based on their desired qualities is the perfect approach. The human resource departments of employees from these contracting companies are never on site and possess little knowledge of on-site operations, and their People and Culture department never shares any findings back to them. These silos allow them to effectively do as they please with anyone coming in the door as a contractor.
If I was in it alone, I wasn't about to back down. Despite their efforts to suppress the information I provided to their People and Culture department, I didn't follow the template they wanted me to follow. If they wanted to limit the conversation to fit their internal narrative then it would be over my dead body.
I went back and forth debating on how far I wanted to extend the story. There's plenty of receipts to write a book, but I'm not a literary. Instead, I settled for a multimedia short story reflective of contemporary times. A bit of a reminder that despite of history's obsession with obliterating us from our given right on this planet, there's always supporters in the world willing to persevere hardship and carry out the truth in the narrative. To give hope and guidance to a future generation so the mission of education is fulfilled in bringing together the human race.
To Calvin McDonald and pawns, you might think got rid of me.
Just know that I'll be:
"Resting here until day breaks
And shadows fall
And darkness disappears."
It was difficult at that time to envision any positive coming out of that situation. Shortly after I realized my knight in shining armor wouldn't be breaking in trough the castle doors, I looked within and stumbled upon a bible verse that would be my guiding principle until I managed to solve the puzzle and finish the work I had been initially hired to achieve, which was coordinate the technology logistics of opening a new office for their new headquarters in Los Angeles. After all, I've never been a quitter and all I've set my mind to, I've achieved. The positive: it realigned my belief with a higher power that I had long let my relationship falter with. My relationship with religion extends to my baptism in the Catholic church, yet as I've grown and learned about history it further added layers of complexity to the teachings of the institution.
"I know I'm preaching to the congregationWe love Jesus but you done learned a lot from Satan, ha-ha"
The same savages that had once used Christianity to exterminate Native populations across the globe in a scale larger than the Holocaust could no longer use religion as a guise to perpetuate superiority. That left them vulnerable over time to allow those with real merit to permeate themselves into organizations that were traditionally not meant for them to succeed in. Corporate organizations cleverly branded this phenomena Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. An umbrella term for non-white. It gave them a metric to systemically categorize what percentage of their population was non-traditional while simultaneously being able to boast how diverse and progressive their workforce was becoming through arbitrary numbers. If you want insight as to how progressive a company is, take a look at those in the executive roles of any given organization.
Now, they've successfully managed to demonize the term DEI as a meritless entry into a company instead of a metric to more accurately represent the systemic barriers of a population's demographics in contrast to an organization's culture.
"May the Lord forgive us, may the gods be with usIn that magic hour I seen good ChristiansMake rash decisions, oh, she do itWhat happened to religion? Oh, she lose it"
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10). This bible verse emerged among my agony in battling whatever danger I posed to higher ups in lululemon's work force and cleverly I printed it out and hung it boldly in my cubicle for everyone to see. For those who knew what to look for, the message was concise. Regardless of what occurred, I'd let my faith in God dictate the way.
"When the sun go down it's the magic hour, the magic hourAnd outta all the colors that'll fill up the skiesYou got green on your mind, I can see it in your eyes"
Technology has been a hobby of mine since I obtained my first PC running Windows ME, and subsequently encountered Age of Empires around eight years old. Consequently, a career in IT would be fitting after formalizing my informal knowledge with a formal education with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Information Systems.
As much as I like to think I was the target of these vindictive actions as a pure result of my qualifications and actions, a more likely cause made me a prime candidate to be the prey of more power hungry hierarchical figures in the organization. Sun Choe posed a real threat to the power structures in that company for progressively advocating meaningful DEI initiatives. If you sat around in any of the C-Suite meetings it was clear the CEO was second in command regardless of organizational structure. Sun Choe commanded the narrative and united the vision of her peers with an effortless leadership style paralleled by few. Looming in the background you had self described "tech-centric" Chief Brand Officer waiting for her turn to shine. While she should had been more concerned that the core switches to the company's infrastructure sat exposed in a closet with no security, instead she plotted on a scheme to put herself second in command.
"I hit the Jamaican spot, at the bar, take a seatI ordered the jerk, she said you are what you eatYou see I always loved that sense of humorBut tonight you should have seen how quiet the room wasThe Lyor Cohen of Dior HommeThat's "Dior Homme", not 'Dior, homie'"
Fashion has always been weirdly intertwined in my life. When we were growing up, I use to watch my mom work on patterns and cut and sew pieces to make articles of clothing. She loved making matching t-shirts for my brother and I and has photographs to back up that sentiment.
Coincidentally, or maybe subconsciously I ended up working for technology departments in fashion industries since I moved to Los Angeles. I enjoyed seeing the process at a larger scale and appreciated the craftsmanship in great work and physically touching the fabrics and admiring the quality, or lack there of, used to make different garments. I'd seen my fair share of responsibilities increase throughout the years working in the operations side of these departments. Although the scope of work would change from job to job a main responsibility of this line of work has always been to process new hires and terminations. It's not difficult work, but it entails high attention to detail and vast knowledge of various IT systems to ensure a smooth on-boarding process or thorough off-boarding procedure.
I'd seen my fair share of good quality humans leave companies before it was officially announced and also had the great pleasure in disabling Active Directory accounts of mediocre employees that contributed only to office politics around the organization. Obviously, a lot of people somewhere in between whose contributions had gone unnoticed or appropriated by someone above them and they were off to greener pastures. Either way, it always meant a new beginning for the employee and also for the company to reshape the way things are done. It always came down to the qualities of the new employee to reshape the role's impact for better or worse.
"I never needed acceptance from all you outsiders"
Undeniably, I had technical qualifications for the role but I didn't meet lululemon's criteria to be around their people. Understandably so, I knew this and was preparing to jump ship as soon as I could. You might think I was incapable of reading the room after hearing I was there for approximately two years, but a vast majority my time there was still under Covid-19 protocols, and despite their efforts to try to bring people into the office barely anyone showed up with exception of the executives. The few others that did come around wouldn't start presenting themselves until the following year when the new office was established. In essence, there was no room to read. It was just me and technology. I was happy.
"Before his jaw shattered climbing up the Lord's ladderWe still speeding, running signs like they don't matterUh, hater talking never made me mad"
It was late July and an important event was taking place in the office to present upcoming season designs with our counterparts in Canada and around the globe. In a similar fashion in the past, they had created an opening for me to become a target by adding curtains around an open space area where the presentation was taking place in the name of privacy while conveniently obscuring camera visibility. The sound carried out throughout the building. If I had managed to dodge attempt after attempt in the past, there was no walking away from this trap. I welcomed it. I had already described to TEKSystems what they were doing and managed to successfully obtain a Return To Office (RTO) Exception.
"I shed a tear before the night's overGod bless the man I put this ice over"
Contract was coming up soon. I needed to leave. There's opportunities to learn elsewhere. At the end of the day, you take the experience learned elsewhere and apply it properly moving forward. You fail, to learn.
"I'm making love to the angel of deathCatching feelings never stumble, retracing my steps"
