The Daily Stoic - Kate Flannery on the Rise and Fall of American Apparel (PT 1)
Episode Date: December 2, 2023On today’s episode of the Daily Stoic podcast Ryan speaks with American actress Kate Flannery on Dov Charney and their early journey at American Apparel, the evolution of feminism, imp...oster syndrome vs being qualified and the difference between quitting and getting fired along with her first book Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles.Strip Tees is her first book where she details her experience in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cult-like devotion to the unorthodox CEO and founder of American Apparel. The line between sexual liberation and exploitation quickly grows hazy, leading Kate to question the company’s ethics and wrestle with her own. Kate Flannery was born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and currently works for the Emmy Award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race. IG: @KateCFlannerywww.kate-flannery.com✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Still Podcast. You know, I'm still wrestling with it. I'm wrestling, as I think we all do wrestle with who I was in my 20s decisions I made,
things I found myself doing, views I had,
things I did too much of, things I didn't do enough of.
And you may have even seen me wrestle with this
in the afterwards of Courageous Calling,
something I've wrestled with a lot of
in the preface of ego is the enemy.
But for those of you don't know,
before I wrote these books,
I wrote books on marketing I wrote books on marketing
and those books on marketing were informed by my experiences as a marketer.
I was the director of marketing at this company called American Apparel, which was at one
point the fastest growing fashion company in the world.
Hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales made hundreds of millions of garments
every year. And they made them right in downtown Los Angeles,
not using sweatshops,
doing some of the coolest, most provocative,
most talked about marketing in the world.
And I came to the company,
somewhat midway through its trajectory.
It was really hot in the early 2000s,
sort of peaking right around when I joined in 2007. And then over
the next seven years while I was there, it was constantly in the news for good reasons,
bad reasons. And its founder, Dave Charney, was this person who saw a lot of potential
in me, gave me a lot of opportunities, but was also a deeply flawed and even tragic figure.
And I've been talking about and writing about that really ever since the first time I met
him because he offered me a job that night.
And I said, look, I'd love to do it for reasons you'll hear in today's episode.
But I'm going to be writing about this the whole time because I write about my life.
And I need to carve out the ability to do that.
And anyways, needless to say,
it's a controversial company.
Dev almost certainly would have been me too,
to had to just stuck around a little bit longer.
He was a great man in some ways,
a terrible man in other ways,
and remains an enigma and a contradiction and a terribly
sad man to this day. I'm going on and on here. When I heard about this book by today's
guest Kate Flannery, I almost couldn't read it because it's really the first memoir, other than some of
the sections I have in trust and I'm wondering that anyone's written about their time in American
apparel, largely because there's been all these, there was some very onerous paperwork that many
employees signed, and also it was a cult of personality, and many people weren't able to see it
differently, especially when it went down the way that it did.
So I don't wanna step on today's guest.
I want you to read her amazing new book,
Strip T's, a memoir of Millennial Los Angeles,
which is a great little subtitle.
And the New York Times book review gave it a rave review.
Good morning, America raved about it.
The New York Post raved about it.
Washington Post raved about it.
It's just a great book.
It hit especially close to home for me.
And so I reached out to her agent Bird
who I've worked with a bunch of times and said,
do you think she'd come on the podcast?
And he set it up and she came out to the pain of porch.
We did a big
episode. I'm bringing you part one today and then part two later in the week. You can
follow her on Instagram at Kate C. Flannery. You can go to her website, Kate-flannery.com
and you can grab strip T's at the painted porch. You can grab it on Amazon. Anywhere books
are sold. I hear it's, I hear there's more to come from Kate.
She's working on other projects.
She's a fascinating lady who I was glad to get to meet
and I think I'll really enjoy this episode.
So stay tuned for part two next week also.
I'm glad we're talking after a little while after I read the book because it took me
a while to like process it.
Yes.
Was it hard for you to write?
Was it traumatic to write?
Or was it cathartic?
It was cathartic for sure.
For sure.
Yeah, it felt great.
And I mean, you had a good amount, you had a good amount of separation between the events of the book
and then writing about it. Yes, definitely. Did you have to wait? Was there, were you like,
because my generation of American environmental employees, and the reason I think that I haven't
been more books, is there were all sorts of legal paperwork that everyone had to sign. And I
wondered if things were a little sloppier at the beginning, which I assume they were. Yeah, yeah, I think that they were for sure. There was, when I was even just
selling this book, there was a lot of talk, you know, what did you sign? Yeah, yeah. And in my memory,
I really held on to everything. Anything I'd signed, I still had my severance agreement, I had
everything. But there was really nothing that was to the severance agreement was pretty standard.
But yeah, a lot of agents and stuff were a little flipped out. But surprisingly, going through
that legal read, there was very little stuff I had to change. Yeah, I just thought the book was
perfect, especially the beginning, because you're what, a union station or something, right?
I forget where you were, but you're, you get,
you get handed a piece of paper that's basically a flyer
for a cult and you're like, no, I would never do such a thing.
Yes, I'm at the Glendale Gallery.
Yes. Very important landmark in Los Angeles.
You know, that's where the first Apple Store was?
Oh, no way.
I know that Apple Store. That's my Apple Store.
There you go.
Oh, that's so crazy.
Yeah.
Yes, I was confronted by this cult girl who just looked like a regular college girl. She had a Northridge t-shirt and she told me she had a prophecy for me, which sort of peaked my interest.
And then she said, it's about the mother god. Do you know, do you know the mother god? And right
there, I was like, oh no, I'm in California.
Here's here's my first cult experience. I've been here a week. Sure. It was very obvious. And then later, you know, when I was scouted for American apparel, it was, you know, just as, just as
explosive of a pitch. Yes. But way more appealing to me. Right. one appeals to the ego, the other sort of spiritual, and then the other
one is a job and exciting and interesting and all these things that sort of get your defenses down,
but then ultimately, you know, it has a similar dynamic, I feel like. Oh, definitely.
Did you come to see it that way after
that you had sort of been in some kind of a cult?
Or is it cult-ish?
If you heard that word, it's like cult-ish.
Yes, that wonderful book by Amanda Montel.
Yeah.
Exactly.
If you would have told me then, you're in a cult.
I would have said, this is my job.
I'm getting a paycheck.
Never, ever would I.
But there were certain dynamics about it that were Coltie.
I mean, even then, that felt good.
Everyone's looking for a sense of place and purpose and identity, especially when you're
23.
And I think Charney really harnessed that.
He created this neverland of young, ambitious people that were still children in a sense and very easy to manipulate.
And I was one of them. Yeah, me too. I mean, my my first visit to the factory. I saw him first at his house. I met him there and at the Little House or the big one. Yeah, which we should talk about. But which was a surreal experience.
It was at night.
You're looking down at LA from this like, you know, multi-million dollar mansion.
I never met anyone like that.
But I remember he said something like, I want to show you the factory, come down, you
know, like a couple days.
And I went down to the factory, which is in the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles.
You drive through Skid Row.
You have no idea what to expect.
And then you pull this enormous building,
which when I was there still had the same banners
that you're talking about in the book,
American Apparel is an industrial revolution.
Those banners are still on the building.
It's very unusual.
What are they doing up there?
It's probably hard to take that.
I mean, there were two of the biggest buildings
I'd ever seen in my life.
I mean, it's 800,000, to 800,000 square foot buildings
and they've been there for 100 years or something.
And so I walk in, you take that J.E.E. elevator
up your talking about.
And then I was supposed to meet him on one of the floors.
And I meet him, he's sort of on the move.
And he walks, we walk through this cafeteria,
which I'm sure it was the same one.
And then all of a sudden, you're just on the floor of a factory where like these sewing machines
are going and people are, I don't think I'd ever been in one before, you know, people are making
these shirts at this like lightning pace. And as he's walking down the thing, everyone stops and
they get up and they just start cheering. And I was like, what is this?
That wasn't the cult in the sense that these were young.
But these were like factory workers who had been so changed
by the decisions that he'd made.
This guy was their ticket to the American dream
in an incredible way. And I remember seeing that and just,
I mean, I was just sort of in it then, you know?
That's the moment.
I had that exact same experience.
They were getting up on their chairs.
And now that I think about it, does that happen every day?
You know, I never, I never,
did we ask for that in some way?
I, yeah, how, yeah, that's so interesting.
Yeah.
But, you know, I'm sure you feel this way too,
but, you know, when people look back in hindsight,
you know, how could you stay?
How could you have stayed that moment?
Sure.
Is all you need to firm your resolve that this is a good place.
This is a place that's making a difference, and I want to be a part of this.
Yeah, I mean, when you think about these cults, right, they're called this sort of promising
all these things that potentially in the future this could happen,
this is this path, the acquisition, all these sort of ephemeral spiritual promises, right?
Which depending on who you are and what you're going for, that could be very attractive.
I think what was very different about American apparel is that shit was real.
That was a real building with making millions of garments, making hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
And there were real people who were not like the people
that I grew up with who were like,
this guy is doing a thing that shouldn't be possible
and is life changing and amazing.
And you're just like, I wanna be a part of that.
Absolutely.
And I still believe in that business model, you know,
it's very complicated.
It is, it can be done. It can be done somewhat seemingly easily.
We desperately need those factory jobs back here.
Can we do it?
Let's do it.
When he was, he was doing it.
Do you know what he means?
It's not like he had this sort of promise.
It's not even like a we work thing where you're like, this is this, it's a revolution theoretically.
Like it was real, it was happening,
it was making stuff, and this stuff was good.
And-
I thought I would work there for the rest of my life.
Did you?
I don't know if I thought I'd work there for the rest of my life.
So my relationship with the American Pearl,
I think, fundamentally why the cult never like got me me is that I always wanted to be a writer and so and I met Doug through Robert Green with the 40 dollars power to talk about the book.
And so I always kind of had one foot in and one foot out in that like I really wanted to do this thing and it was really exciting and I thought I could learn all this stuff and I also thought it would be a way to make money and then be secure. But I always had this other thing that I was doing
and I think fundamentally what Colts do and partly what made the American parallel dynamic
work is he was really picking people who didn't have anything else going on or any other
options and then it becomes your world and then as you get isolated from regular people
and the rest of the world,
your sense of what's normal and not normal goes away.
Absolutely.
Yes, exactly.
That's the story of Structius.
Yeah, totally.
And when you're 23, you don't see yourself as a child.
Oh, no.
I had it all figured out.
I had it all figured out.
No one was
going to get me. But yeah, you are brand, you are wet behind the ears. I met before I could legally
drink. And so that's crazy. How old were you? Were you 21? I was at turn 21 like a month after I
started. Oh my gosh, that's so crazy. I was 23. So I was almost on the old lady side. Like I was
one of the elders there. And when I left, I was 27 or 28 and then I
certainly was. Right. But you don't, like, in when you're 20 or 23 or whatever, you're like,
I'm great. I have all these things up. You don't think like, I don't know shit. Right? And so you
can't even, you can't even go, why does an adult want to hire me? Like, why do they want this, right? And the reason they want it is because you're a child
and you don't know shit, right?
Yes, yes.
You need people to say, well, why didn't you rebel?
Why?
I thought I was rebelling.
We were in this subversive company that was changing.
We were rebelling.
We were revolting.
Like, that I was doing all of those things
that I thought the kind of person that I
was would do at 23. Right. Yeah, you don't you don't see him as the man and you don't. You see
the everyone else working regular jobs, doing regular things there, the man, which is kind of the
dynamic of what occult does or any tribal dynamic, which is like, how do you make it us versus them?
So then you don't think about what's weird about you,
you only think what's wrong with them.
And then as the media attention
or the outside criticism comes in,
it has the very insidious effect
of actually making you dig in deeper to the thing.
Oh, absolutely.
Any friends that I had, what are you doing work in there?
It just, you don't know.
It solidified my feelings. I was in the in there. It just, you don't know, it solidified my feelings.
I was in the right place.
It just pushed me deeper and deeper and deeper in.
When you talk about this in the book,
it's like you think you're winning
and no part of you is like, you're making like $12 now.
You know what I mean?
This isn't, you're not winning.
Like this isn't, you have no sense of how it works
anywhere else.
That's why you were picked.
And so like you're you don't see it you can't see yourself as a victim. And so you're missing the
fact that even if this what like you're not even like being mercenary because you're not being paid
enough to be mercenary, you know. Totally. I know it's so shocking.
It's so shocking.
Yeah.
It's a, it's weird.
There's not that many people who can talk about it.
Because.
Well, that's why I was so looking forward
to our conversation because no one really knows.
And I was like, what is this going to be like?
Because he really knows.
And I mean, I was there during the party.
Yeah.
And you were there during the fall. Well, yeah, you were there. It's weird. Right. Like, I felt like I was there during the party. Yeah. And you were there during the fall.
Yeah, you were there.
It's weird.
Right.
Like, I felt like I was there early,
because it had just gone public.
But, yeah.
I mean, even when you were there,
it was, I mean, he'd been doing it
and for people don't know the American Apparel story.
He started in his dorm room at Chote,
the, like, the elite boarding school on the West Coast.
And so he'd been in that business for 20 years,
or 15 years.
And then I didn't come along until like years after you.
So it kind of had these different eras.
Yeah, I did.
But.
Yeah, when I started, I mean, there were people there
with far more seniority than I was the new girl.
Yeah.
But real, I was there right at the start. Yeah, you were there before any of the negative press
really, or that started while you were there. Well, I think really the first thing was the Jane,
uh, the Jane magazine interview with Claudine Coe. And that was before I started working there.
Oh, really? Yeah. That was, uh, maybe six months before I started. OK. And that is where I, you know, we got flyer bombed.
It was like maybe my first month of work.
Over night, these, you know, wheat pastors
showed up and put flyers all over the store.
And they said that outside of the store and the street.
And sunset boulevard and everywhere.
And they said, obey your master, baiter, B.A.I.
is like an interesting pun.
And it was, that was a reference to that Jane Magazine article.
I was sort of like, you know, the manager was like, get into action, dove, could be here
any minute.
You know, I was like, frantically peeling them off and I ended up saving one.
And really it was at that moment when I peeled it off, it was like intact and I kind of
tucked it away.
And I thought, I'm going to write about this someday.
Wow. I'm going to write about this someday. Wow
I'm gonna write about this someday for sure
You know I had studied writing in college and I was always sort of you know
I knew there would be some story. I was gonna write in that that was it and I even told people
I'm gonna write about this you know sure sure no one believed me. Yeah, it took a while but
Yeah, it's kind of remarkable remarkable you have these moments like that
and I do too, where you're like,
how is that not the beginning and the end of it?
Exactly.
But it, you, the mind finds a way to make it make sense
or not make it urgent or whatever.
Also, a big factor is, I mean, it seems like it's so close
in our rear view, but 20 years
ago, it was like a very different time culturally, especially in that moment of celebrity sex
tapes and upskirts shots, and the girls had gone wild.
That's true.
And I, as a feminist, coming out of this like feminist college, wanted to, you know, be a sexually autonomous being and really
sort of like embrace my sexuality. And here was this company that was so in your face, so open.
I really felt like that was the next step in my feminist evolving evolution.
It made sense maybe within the overall vibe of sexual positivity.
You weren't supposed to be judging people,
there wasn't supposed to be a barren behavior,
everything was normal or on some kind of spectrum.
And maybe everyone has this sense that there are lines,
but like because they weren't clear,
it made it easy for,
made it possible for people to kind of play
the different groups off of each other.
For sure, definitely.
And I mean, I'm still a sexually positive feature,
but American apparel was,
there's a lot of good things about it,
but it was really sex positivity
to the point of toxicity.
Of course.
You know, like anything in the patriarchy. You can't get all the good stuff.
Yeah, it's so strange. So, okay, so you get, you basically get flyered off the street
and you have no idea that this thing is going to change the course of your life.
You mean when I get scouted? Yeah, yeah. And then you just, I mean, you start the way most people
started in American parallel, which is you started as a retail employee.
Yes. And I was like, you know, I had just spent a year writing at the Urban
Outfitters headquarters. And so I was like, you know, I have other skills here.
Like I could be copywriting. I could, you know, that's what I've been doing.
They're like, no, no, you stay here.
Yeah. And I wanted to be a part so bad.
I, I, a part of things so bad that I did it anyway.
They're like, here's the key.
You know, and I showed up on time.
I brought my East Coast work ethic where I showed up on time.
They're like, whoa, you're in charge.
And, you know, I sort of stuck myself there.
Oh, yeah, it was definitely a real job.
And it felt like a real job.
It gave me health insurance.
It did pay a few dollars over what other retail jobs paid.
I in the long run, urbanfitters also really underpaid me.
I was making the same, you know, but I was in charge.
You know, I, I had, well, I mean, I thought I was in charge.
I had more responsibility and I felt more important.
I felt like it was a part of things.
If you thought about what part of you it was or what it was
that made you want to be a part of it so bad?
Yeah. I mean, I've always sort of, you know, like, wanted to operate on the fringes of things.
And, you know, I came from like a punk rock background and it always felt good to rebel.
Even going to Brynmar, which is such a feminist institution,
was a way to rebel.
And so here is even another way to take it further.
Yeah.
I think that some of the girls
have a sense of sort of like vulnerability about them
that made them, I don't know where I'm going with this, that made them easier to be victimized in a way.
And maybe I didn't have that sort of vulnerability, which is why I didn't, you know,
wasn't a dove girl or didn't get wrapped in. But I don't know, that might be a little the victim blaming.
Everyone leaves the legacy.
I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together.
For some, the shadow falls across decades, even centuries.
I do not believe it.
It is unacceptable to have figures like roads glorified.
But it also changes.
Reputations are reexamined by new generations
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Picasso is undeniably a genius, but also
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From Wondering and Goldhanger podcasts, I'm Afwahrhersh.
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Wondery Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. No, there was a child like this to most of the girls at sea.
Why does I call this?
I have never once turned on Syria on my watch on purpose,
only on Macs.
No, there was this sort of mix of like adultness
and child likeness in the women that were in the company,
which sort of it also is true of the voice.
Yes.
But yeah, there was kind of a childlikeness.
Well, because of his behavior, his sense of humor,
only teenagers are gonna tolerate that shit.
Like if I had a boss doing that, I'd be like, I know.
No way, and not because of my experience
with American peril, just because of how I've grown
and who I am now and culturally and all that stuff.
Yeah, this is getting far, I feel,
but I've always thought that's,
it's a strange thing we don't kind of talk about.
Like the older man who's attracted to younger women,
I've never gotten the year 40 and she's 20.
You exist in different universes.
There's something,
how are you spending time together? Do you know what I mean?
So I always found it remarkable and probably should have
also seen more alarm bells, but it was like this was a person
who was incredibly smart, incredibly successful,
incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful,
incredibly stressed out, and he wanted to be surrounded by what were effectively children. There was a Michael
Jacksonness to it where you do you are clearly running from a kind of a real life.
Yeah, for sure. Yes, Neverland, exactly.
Yeah, right. And the Playboy Mansion is a version of Neverland,
and the house was a version of that.
Yes, yes, the big house.
I lived on just down from Apex Drive.
I lived downtown, and at one point,
and again, these things all seem like they make sense.
He was like, I'll pay you to move closer to me.
And he gave me like $5,000 to move to this house
where I could see his house from my house.
Yes.
And I was like, I never even, like,
it was obviously so he could call me at two in the morning
and be like, I need you.
And I'd have to go up there.
And it was never urgent.
There was never anything important.
It was always just something that a person with better
boundaries would have waited until the next day
to type in an email or whatever. But then the weird part about sort of
those dynamics is there's the the person who doesn't have good boundaries.
And then the person who doesn't recognize that the other person, you know what I mean?
Like, why would you want to live close to your boss? That's insane.
Yes. And so it's this mutually
reinforcing dynamic that happens. Yeah, absolutely.
Definitely.
And only youth would fall for that.
Yeah, because an older person would have kids or espouse
or think hobbies or they would live in Northridge
because they could know for to live in LA
and they were different.
The commute it, like, there would be all these things
that would make that knot.
They would never answer the phone at 2 a.m.
when you've always been calling.
Well, so I think that, so I feel like I kind of got saved
in the sense that, and I never did anything that I,
you know, I never did anything that got me in trouble.
I never, like, got sucked into it.
I never, like, I never went too far in far in because I was wanting to be a writer,
so I just had this other stuff going on.
And I didn't really want a job.
You know what I mean?
The whole point was how do I not have a job?
Yes.
And then I had been with my wife.
How long did it?
I've been with my wife maybe a year.
We weren't married, but we've been dating a year.
And we stayed together the whole time,
we're still together now.
So like I-
Through your American apparel experience?
Yeah, yes.
My gosh, wow.
So because of that, I never,
like, it,
I never could have lived in the house
and ever wanted to live in the house.
I never wanted to do any of the things
that I think people sort of told themselves
were the unpaid benefits of working there. And in fact, I had this clear thing
that I didn't want to get in trouble, right? And so it was like, it just sort of
it set up these guardrails that I think.
I have one foot in the real world. Yeah.
But if you're 22 a man or a woman, you're just like, you don't have anything going on.
Yeah. And so you're like, this house is nicer than my house,
or whatever.
No, no.
Or the whole structure is designed
to sort of alienate and disconnect you from stuff.
Yeah, so I absolutely.
You're traveling, you're staying,
not even in your own hotel room.
It's just weird.
I was so disconnected even from my family.
Like that moment in time, I wasn't going home. I was so disconnected even from my family like that moment in time I wasn't going
home I was sort of like avoiding their calls because I was so uh just that was my world my
job. Did you feel like you were a really important like career woman? I was the most important one
that was doing their hiring. I mean yeah. I mean the sense of like like you were you had a cell phone
and it was ringing all
the time and you had, you were traveling for things that you'd have to work your way
up a corporate hierarchy at a normal company to get to do.
And all of a sudden, you're like, you're, it's like you're, you're playing pretend.
Like I was the director of marketing of a company that I had no business being that.
But I, I had the keys to the car.
Yeah.
And people were making my travel arrangements for me.
I was flying to new cities to scout locations.
Like what did I know about which storefront
was gonna be the best?
Like I had no idea.
But I'm like, well, this one's good.
It's new to the Apple store.
Okay.
Yes, yes.
So you can have the kind of dissonance there as you go, I mean, well, this one's good. It's near the Apple store. Okay. Yes. Yes.
So, you can have the cognitive dissonance there as you go, you have total impostor syndrome.
Right?
Like, I have no business being there.
I have to quit.
This is insane.
Or you go, actually, I am qualified to do this.
And this is not insane.
This is not, this is different.
But actually, the old way of doing this crazy. This is actually the best way to do
it. And I'm special. And he they saw me. Oh, yeah. And that's
what it is. That's what it was for me. I think that's what it
was for a lot of girls. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You're, you, you
feel chosen. And then that blinds you to the signs that maybe this is more random than you'd
like to admit or based on something else you would like not to admit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's fascinating. It's totally and I think people should hear about because it doesn't, it's not like,
oh, this is a weird thing that these two people experience, but this is also how people
get into weird industries that they don't understand is how people
back political candidates, they, you know, or take,
John, you tell yourself it's gonna be different for me.
You tell yourself, oh, I'm not like those other people.
It's different with, and what you're doing
is you're just working, you're sort of
dulling your conscience, you're dulling your sense of awareness,
and you're just getting yourself deeper
and deeper into something that, in a lot of cases,
it becomes really hard to get out, if not impossible.
That's like any abusive relationship.
Yes.
Yeah, I think still being with my wife,
I think we have had to work through stuff,
because we would
get an argument where she'd be like, that's insane.
And I'd be like, what?
This is my job.
And so it was like this process, like she probably feels gaslit by me, but I wasn't aware
of what was, so gaslighting, I feel like requires a certain awareness of what
you're doing.
It's like a person who's being fooled, fools other people.
Right.
And so there's this weird dynamic that I, it's taken me a long time to have to process
and get out of.
You, you were so fortunate to have someone who wasn't in the company, which is, you
know, he encouraged us to date within the company. Of course. Because of reasons like that. Yeah. There's a podcast about
American apparel where there's this heated debate. I forget who it is or I don't think I knew
the woman, but she was defending herself or just talking about working for American apparel.
And her partner was in the other room and he's like, I'm sorry, but I have to interject.
Right. And he's the voice of reason. He's saying, and she's like, her point is, you don't understand
because you're not there.
You don't know what's really going on.
And that's what I would have said too.
Yeah.
It's so obvious to anyone looking at the situation
what's going on, but you are so wrapped up
in these cult dynamics and your sense of purpose
and tying your identity
to the way that you're making money, which is something that I will never do again.
You know, I really conflated my, the way I paid rent with my identity.
And, um, when it's so funny that yeah, money is even entering here because you're making like 40
grand a year. Like you're not, you know, I never made it to 40. I think I topped out at like $32,000.
Yeah.
That's what I made when I left.
Which was more than, but like, yeah, it's not.
It's still not enough.
Well, yeah, you would sense from the outside
that people are sort of debasing themselves
or doing things that are potentially
have ramifications later in your career,
you go, oh, it's for the
money. And usually money is way down on the list of motivating factors. Like, you go,
why are these people working for this, yeah, this political candidate or why are people
working this and should money is part of it? Sure. And some industries more than others.
Yeah. But usually it's a lot less than you think. Even like porn. They're not cleaning up.
There's other things that have happened first that get you to rationalize it and be okay with it,
and even find a positive good in it. Maybe the money is the one you tell yourself, because it's
when you tell yourself, because it's the most logical
and the most socially acceptable even, but it's not even the case.
Yeah, it's so true.
Like, it's not like there were private jets
or like, you know, you go,
I'm staying in a company apartment
and it's like, what were they paying
for that company apartment?
Like, $2,000, like, you know, it's not,
these weren't like your corporate condos
that you see in like an episode of billions or something.
These were like dumps.
I remember the apartment in San Francisco
is in the tender line.
Oh, here I am in the tender line.
I was gonna ask you, did you,
maybe this is one area we intersected.
Did you, were you the one that scouted the location in the mission district?
In San Francisco, did you pick that store?
I don't think so. I did a lot of scouting up there for the,
the like, whatever was in the Stanford area. That was like,
Palo Alto? Yeah, Palo Alto. Okay. Yeah. No, I didn't, I don't think I did anything there.
I had to stay, I stayed in the tenderloin
when I was doing the Palo Alto stuff
because that's where the company apartment was.
I have stayed in that apartment.
Yeah, so one of my fur, like it was sort of, you know,
into the furnace, like they threw it into the deep end.
I probably worked there for like three weeks
and I get, you have to go up to San Francisco
and do this thing. I go, what?
Yeah.
And they go, so there's some, there's some like protest about one of the stores. And what
had happened was someone like you had gone like, I think we should open a store here. And
so they'd signed a tenure lease on a building in the mission district. Not the landlord probably knew this the whole time and saw him as an easy mark.
But there was a stipulation in the business district
that you couldn't open if you had more than 10 locations,
you were considered a big box retailer
and you had to go through a special approval process
to exist in the mission district.
Was the way to keep out like big corporations. They didn't want like a war or something. Yeah.
And so, uh, well, American parallel have like a hundred stores at this point. And so they,
but they just signed the lease. And so an American parallel just flying by the seat of its
pants had put up signs were coming. Yeah. And all of a sudden in this huge protest, like, hey,
they're trying to break the rules, whatever.
And so there was a city council meeting or whatever,
and they just sent me a person who worked there for three weeks.
I'm like 21.
They were just like, go fix this,
which was exciting on the one hand.
And then obviously later, did I realize
I was like a lamb being led to slaughter.
So I go up there and I'm they told me I had five minutes to speak and I get up there for and
I forget how it went. It was like it was supposed to start a certain time. We had to wait all this time
and you're just seeing like hundreds of people are just lining up to speak this thing. And
you can see a picture of me. I'm wearing like a gray American apparel button up and it're just seeing like hundreds of people are just lining up to speak on this thing. And you can see a picture of me I'm wearing like a gray American apparel button up
and it's just like black, just down the side.
I'm like sweated totally through this shirt
and I get up there and says to speak for like five minutes.
They go, actually there's so many people you have two minutes.
And so I get up there and I speak for two minutes.
And then what did you say?
You know, like we didn't know, like I don't know,
like they made, I wrote some speech, right, that, that I'm sure nobody had approved. I had no
idea on doing it. I was trying to give this speech. And then like, okay, that's the, you know,
the representative from American Pearl, you sit down here and now we'll hear from the community.
And then in my recollection, like 200 people spoke, one right after another, all directing their very
angry comments directly at me, not a single person spoke in favor of it. And then of course,
the store never opened and the company took a huge pass. The mission has now since been totally gentrified. But I just remember going,
like, you're talking about, it's like, you're peeling out these masturbator signs.
Like, this is like my first month on the job, and I'm like, this is where I'm going to continue
working. This is a good place to work. This is all normal. Nothing's on fire. And I never
thought about it again until like years later.
And I was like, what was that? Yes. Yes. Yes.
So funny. Yeah. It was just some kid
signed the lease and then another kid cleaned it up. Yep. You know, that's just how it
how it was. I used to think it was that, you know, I had only been there maybe a month or two
before. I was like, go to New York and hire. Just go go to New York and hire, go tomorrow.
And yeah, I'm like, what, what does that mean? Where do I stay? You know, you should go
to New York. And then, then once I got to New York, they're like, okay, go start location
scouting. Here, here's a car. Just drive, you know. And that, I used to think it was like
a trial by fire, but really it was just because the company was growing so rapidly,
they just needed bodies to do these positions and I was sort of responsible and here you go.
And it felt good. It made me feel good. Of course, yeah. I interpreted it as I am the one who can do this.
Yes, you don't go. This is a bad way to run a company and the reason I'm being hired to do it is because
a bad way to run a company and the reason I'm being hired to do it is because all the other people
would never accept this job. Do you know what I mean? Like this is they'd be like I'm not going to work there. That company is circling the drain. Like they would have seen what that meant.
To me, it was so exciting. I'd spent a year working at the Urban Outfitters headquarters.
And it was just, you know, like, dismal beige colored corkboard, like,
boss and a button down. Everyone was significantly older than I was. I was working for the e-commerce
department, which was sort of like the red headed to stepchild of the moment. Like it was the catalog
was important in the stores. And it was so boring and miserable and And I felt, we were selling t-shirts
that said voting is for old people
and a board game called Get Opily.
Like, I knew this is not me, this is not why I am.
I have to get out of here.
So then going to this other company,
which seemed so revolutionary and was growing so rapidly
and was the total opposite of that work environment.
Yeah.
It was so incredibly seductive to me.
So the unraveling or everything was so crazy,
that just fired me up even more.
What it's hard when it's working to be like,
this is not how it should be done.
Because it's not like you had started your own,
you know, a hundred million dollar apparel company
and you're like, there's a better way to do this.
Yeah.
You're just like, that way it was horrible.
It's sort of, you know, sort of corporate suit, you know,
bureaucracy.
Then you go over here.
You don't realize there's all these reasonable solutions
between the two.
The choice is not between like tyranny and anarchy.
There's some there there right in between.
Yes.
The most successful companies are operating it, but you don't know that because you have it
worked there.
Yes, because you're 20.
Yes.
And it's also boring, so that's not talked about, right?
The way most people operate does not enter the conversation because it's by definition
unremarkable.
No, absolutely. Yeah, another thing people don't realize,
how could you say it was a really fun job?
It's true. It was an unbelievable amount of fun.
You know, the people that I met there are still some of my closest friends.
And you know, what I wanted to talk about with you is sort of the idea of regret.
And sometimes that readings people will say,
if you had to do it all over again, would you do it?
It's always like a Gen Z person.
And I'm not really regretting the type of person.
And I would, I would totally have done it again.
Yeah.
You were in a little deeper, I think.
I can then, you know, I don't know,
I want to know what you thought about that.
No, regret is a hard word because I think we take that as meaning you sort of disavow
that it happened and you're like that you, it's, yeah, regret, regret is almost, I think
I'm reluctant to go, I regret it, I would do it differently in the sense that you're saying
like you don't like where you ended up.
But I was talking to this woman, her name is Dr. Edie Eager.
She's this Holocaust survivor.
I was talking to her about something and she said,
I was doing with a different situation.
I had a regret for her and she was like,
I'll give you these magic words.
And she's like, the magic words are,
if I knew then what I knew now,
I would do things differently.
Right?
And so it's like, if I had awareness of certain things,
I would have made different decisions.
But I have the awareness I have now
because of the decisions that I made
and the things that I learned.
I've learned so much about human nature and people.
It was, it's like going back in time
and living it
Versailles or something, you just, you're like, oh, this is a fundamental part of the human psyche,
like the way that, you know, sort of hangers on, sort of circle around a powerful person and
how cults of personality work. And, you know, and And so that taught me so much,
then I have this kind of,
it's more like I have some embarrassment
about the fact that I,
it took me so long to understand
what it was and what it was happening.
Do you know what I mean?
Sure, no, absolutely.
You say something in one of your pieces,
like, you learn so much about yourself
and how you respond to things,
and it is, I mean, it was certainly was a character defining event for me. Yes.
Talking to some of my friends who have relationships with Dove and still do to some extent,
they're like, yeah, you know, sometimes people will ask me, you know, what'd you do before this?
And I'll say, American apparel, and they'll say, oh, and I just kind of keep my mouth shut,
you know, they're embarrassed. Yeah. Well, and then, and then you see, oh, and I just kind of keep my mouth shut, you know, they're embarrassed.
Yeah.
Well, and then you see, yeah, you see people who still haven't managed to swim free.
Oh, cool.
And you go, oh, okay.
So I have some regrets, but my big, my, I feel good that I'm not that.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
You've got to grade it on a curve of how other people handled it.
Yes, it's so true.
Well, maybe not most,
but a few of the girls that are right about in strategies
are still with him, still living with him.
It is remarkable.
You get it, I thought you did it very well
in the book, you're sort of talking about,
you're talking about how you basically have this experience,
you're like, I gotta get out and you go to get out.
And then you sort of test the market and you realize,
oh, it's harder to get out than I thought,
and it's not as good and you come back.
I think it's really important because when people
get out of things or they walk away from careers,
we tend to see it as this sort of epiphany moment
that where all became clear, you got moral clarity
and then you walk away and it's not like that at all. Well, you got moral clarity and then you walk away.
And it's not like that at all.
That's a very idealistic, like Hollywood way
of looking at things that some people say.
Yeah, no, I agree.
If you read the harder they fall.
No, I have.
It's this novel by Butchleberg.
I thought I'd read you this passage.
So I read this,
my understanding was that I read this right before I left American
Pro, which was in, I left to write my first book in 2011, but they were basically like,
what if we just kept hanging, even you didn't actually leave.
So I stayed in for another three years.
I left in 2014 after Doug was, uh, put checking it out too.
So I left in 2014.
So if you had said,
when did you read the book
that helped you realize
why you shouldn't work there anymore?
It must have been like around then, right?
It should have been in 2014
or should have been in 2011
when you made the decision to leave.
Because here's this passage.
This is like the last page of the book.
Let me see.
He says,
the worst of them all, the biggest heel of them all, the only one who knew right from wrong
and kept his goddamn mouth shut,
the only one who knew the score, knew what was going on
and still kept his hands in his pocket.
And this is a publicist who's like,
it starts working for a fighter that's propped up by the mob.
And then he says, I knew the goddamn trouble with me.
I thought enough brains to see it and not enough guts to stand up to it.
Thousands of us, millions of us, corrupted rootless career-ridden,
good hearts and yellow bellies, looking for, living out our lives for the easy buck,
the soft birth, indulging ourselves in the illusion that we can deal in filth
without becoming the thing we touch.
So I would have said, obviously I read this
and then I left shortly thereafter.
And so I was gonna write about that a couple of years ago.
And so I went, I was like, well, let me get the date.
So I was like, I knew about it on Amazon,
so I pulled up the Amazon release.
You know, I typed it in the heart of the fall.
And it goes, you bought this book
in September of 2008.
Oh my God.
Like a year after I started.
And that's what I've read it to.
So I read it.
So I would have thought all this stuff happened
and then I read the passage and the light goes on,
I make all the connections.
In fact, the exact opposite happens.
I read it at the beginning.
I think. And then still. And all this stuff happens. I read it at the beginning and still the stuff
happens. So we have this sense that there's this moment where you get the clarity and it's not
that at all. And in fact, most people who turn, who become government witnesses or walk away from
cults or whatever it is, It's not only not glamorous,
it's usually even kind of a shameful ran out
with their tail between their legs.
It's only later that we're like, oh, I get,
and so that's actually given me a lot of empathy
and sympathy now.
Just matters that you changed your mind.
It just matters that you got out.
Just matter that you stopped doing it. I just matters that you got out. Damn. It just matters that you stopped doing it.
I'm not going to expect you to be perfect
because I know it's really fucking hard to change your mind
into a look back on past decisions you made ago.
I shouldn't have done it.
Yeah.
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What a life these celebrities lead.
Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face,
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the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account,
the people trying to get the grubby mitts on it.
What's he all about?
I'm just saying, being really, really famous.
It's not always easy.
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And we're the hosts of terribly famous from Wondery,
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by taking you inside the life of a British icon.
We walk you through their glittering highs
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Yes, the whole thing has made me so much more sensitive or aware of, you know, people's bad behavior in the past or, um, I'm just not as judgmental.
I'm not as judgmental as I was when I was 20.
When I had everything figured out,
when I could spot racism and sexism on my own way,
it's just not that easy when the whole cultural canvas
around you is obscuring everything.
And when you need to make rent next month,
people are like, I would have walked out of there.
Like I'm sure Becky on Goodreads, like, yeah, you would, I'll write away, I would have walked out of there. Like, I'm sure Becky on good reads.
Like, yeah, you would, I'll write away,
you would have been out of there.
But who was gonna pay your rent?
Like, I wasn't going back to Philadelphia.
Yes.
You know, I was not going to admit defeat.
I was way too proud.
And I stayed because I had to.
No, I remember even when I did leave,
like, as American Barrow had very good health insurance.
And then, you know, when you leave a job,
you do Cobra, right?
And it's all of a sudden, you're paying,
it was like $800 a month.
Yes.
And like, thankfully, I did have something else,
but I remember thinking,
oh, this is why, you know, if I was in a different place
and had done things differently,
I wouldn't have been able to leave.
Yep.
There's this, there's this idea in Uptans and Claire's writing.
He, first of all, he has that, that great quote.
It's very hard to get someone to understand something
like their salary depends on them not understanding, right?
Which is the essence of working at American Apparel
or working for a certain political party
or getting
sucked into this or that, like, you don't want to see it because your paycheck depends on you not
seeing it. But he also has this idea, he calls it like the dress suit bribe. And basically, he's
saying, like, he's talking about some person who has to dress up in fancy clothes to work and
finance or something. It's funny, he's talking about this like a hundred plus years ago, but he's like,
you know, you see yourself paying, he says, you know, five cents to get your shoes shined.
He says, but you don't see yourself as someone who is paid to be a person who has their shoes
shined. Right? And so, you know, you don't feel like one of the things I was always hesitant about,
and I think it saved me, but other people were less careful. You don't realize all the different
things that are happening along the way that are actually choices. They're actually, you're actually
getting bought and you don't realize it. And it's hard to get out from it, right? You can't, you
you get a nicer apartment, right? You buy an expensive engagement ring.
You, you know, you, you get enough fight with your parents
about having the job.
And now, and now your identity, but also your lifestyle
is now at risk if you were to change your mind
about what you're doing.
Yes, no, absolutely.
There's some in one of the reviews of
Stryptease, the writer quotes Margaret Atwood, it's amazing what someone can, I'm
butchering this, but it's amazing what you can get used to provided there are a
few compensations. That is the story of American apparel from me, my why I
stayed. There's a, if we're just quoting literature back in point three, there's a scene in the Great Gatsby
where Gatsby goes to Nick and he says like,
hey, I'm working on this thing.
Maybe you could do me a favor
and I think there's a little bit of money in it for you.
And Nick has a vague sense of what Gatsby does
and he doesn't kind of approve.
And he says, I always reflected later in life that my entire future hinged on me
politely declining that.
That I didn't accept the offer was a direction shift in my life.
Because what happens is people go, hey, can
you do this? We think of bribes as like, here's an envelope of cash, right? But instead
at American Apparel, it was like, hey, I'll coastline a lease for you, right? Or, hey,
um, you need a car? Yes. Yes. Yeah. A reliable car. Right. Yes, I do.
Yes.
And so it's now you owe that person something.
And the dynamic is very hard to ship.
You talk about this.
You have this experience that in a sane universe
would have resulted in people being fired
or lawsuits being filed.
And instead, the resolution is like,
do you want a 1996 used Mercedes-Benz sedan? Yes. From my fleet. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you want,
do you want an apartment? You can pick it out. It has to be in Miami where you don't live and don't
want to live by law. And it's, I'm offering you a year lease on
it. Like it's not an asset that you get to keep. You know what I mean?
It's not like, let me solve your conscience with, with a,
with an appreciating asset. It's like, let, let me actually indenture you more
towards me for a set period of time. Absolutely.
Yeah, you don't, like, I remember at one point, he had some relationship
with like a car dealer and he would co-sought. And then, like, so we would sign these leases for
people. And I remember, like, thinking, like, these people are signing it all away for like three
years of Akeia, you know? Again, it wasn't, these weren't like Ferraris. These were, and so you end up, the compensations don't,
we all like to think like my price is, you know,
in the millions of, but your price is actually just like,
oh yeah, I don't like flying in coach.
And then they have you.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's so true. And then, because they have you, then you have you. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's so true.
And then because they have you, then you do things,
that you feel guilty about,
or that you have attachments to.
Yeah.
And then you are complicit to know,
you can't get out.
Absolutely.
Even down to, I remember he would say,
you want clothes, take what you want.
This stuff is pennies to me.
It's nothing, take what you want. This stuff is pennies to me. It's nothing. Take what you want.
You know, it's time it felt so special.
And it does sort of, it appreciates you.
You're in it.
You're thankful.
Yeah, well, and so you have that.
And then the other, I was struck by the scene
and you were talking about in the book where like,
you see someone in a photo shoot that you recruited.
And so you now see those shoots a little differently than you then you did when you first started.
And so I imagine there's kind of a guilt slasher. I'm part of this feeling now.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I hired hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.
You know, I, that was one situation where I really, I know, I knew the girl she was so young,
when I hired her, and here are these photos with the infamous White Duvet, you know, just about a
year later. Yeah. And, but, you know, I do, I feel bad about that. But really, I, you know, there's definitely
some like Gen Zers who stand up at these readings, like, you know, actually you're complicit.
And you brought all those, but how many women, you know, were, but I mean, really, that is just
putting all the response, like at the time, I was hiring for the biggest, and people don't realize how big the company was.
Sure.
Everyone wanted to work there towards the end.
I mean, I was hiring for mall stores.
Yeah.
The vast majority of people I hired
would, their only contact with Doug would be,
on a conference call.
Sure.
And I think that to say, you're to blame blame and you were part of this when I was so young and wrapped up in this systemic patriarchal capitalist system is just another of those sort of idealized Hollywood things because huge store and the responsibility was on Doves' shoulders not to date these high schoolers,
not to abuse his employees. It's not about me hiring people to work essentially, it was like the gap.
Yeah, no, I mean, it's a blurrier line between victims and victimizers and there's a hierarchy of them, right? And I'm pointing out more, I think that you're just,
you just feel yourself becoming part of this thing.
And then it's easier for you to think the thing is okay,
than to think, oh, I'm part of the problem.
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
And so, it's a carrot and kind of a stick thing, right?
Where it's like, you have all these benefits of doing it.
So, and it's hard for you to see what's happening.
And then in the moments where you start to feel guilt,
you realize, oh, if I kind of tug at this thread,
or if I look too hard in this mirror,
I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to feel
some feelings that I don't wanna feel.
So it's easier just to keep going.
Oh, absolutely.
Or it's easier just to keep going or it's easier just to, you know,
make certain, you know, rules inside it that you feel okay with instead of going, but the whole
fucking thing is not okay. Like I told myself I was staying at a certain point, especially after
I was like, I'm gonna be writer, I got this book deal,
why am I still here?
I mean, there is, I heard someone would say
that heroin and a salary of the two hardest,
you know, addictions to quit, you know?
To just go like, hey, I'd like to not be paid anymore
is a hard thing to do at 25.
Absolutely.
But, but.
You're isolated in a new city.
Yeah, so I think, but what I told myself is I can protect these people.
Like these are my people.
I have this group that I had hired or had come into my department that I was the one
dove talked to me and not to them, right?
And if I went away, then how long would they last?
Or what unpleasant experiences would they have?
So you go, oh, I'm doing it for this.
I'm one of the good guys inside the system or whatever.
And you don't go, what kind of system has good guys?
What kind of system needs good guys inside of a bad system?
You don't think that.
You just go, hey, I'm like, you go,
I'm the person who's
pulling papers off Trump's desk to keep us in NATO or whatever.
And it's true.
Somebody does have to do, I heard this great line.
It was, apparently they tell us people in Moscow, they go, everyone is entitled to a lawyer,
but it doesn't have to be you.
Right?
But that's what you do.
You go, if I don't do it, someone worse will do it,
or I'm doing it, and I'm doing it differently
than these other people.
And that's ultimately the lie that helps you rationalize
what feels like not doing what feels like a very scary thing,
that by the time you end up doing it, leaving whatever,
you're like, wait, this is what I was scared of,
this is just regular life.
Like, it's not that big of a deal.
But that's the dynamic that I think keeps people complicit.
Yes, oh, definitely.
When I left, I mean, I stayed for the company
for three years.
Striptease covers my first year.
And you would think anyone would leave after that year.
No, I stayed for three years.
I was laid off at the start of the recession.
And I cried.
I was so sad.
I couldn't imagine my life without American apparel.
Without my friends, I was like totally lost.
You cry for losing a job that you had tried to quit.
You know?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
After, yeah, I just fell in deeper and deeper.
I, you know, it was the devil I knew.
I certainly didn't want to go back to working for a company like Urban Outfitters,
which was corrupt in its own way.
And, yeah, I stayed.
And then I went into reality television.
I really, great, you know, but again, I have learned that lesson where I don't conflate my
identity with what I do to pay the rent. Yeah, you you you think it's gonna be so awful and in fact, it's not like the people
I interviewed Adam Kinzinger the Republican Congressman who's on the January 6th mission
He was like he was just talking about he's like my life is way better now
But he's like you don't he's there's something about not wanting to be an ex-congressman. He's like, actually, it's more lucrative. My conscience
is clear. I have more time. I can see my family can live where I want. But there's this,
this, the status quo bias is such an enabling factor.
I mean, it's absolutely, I felt such shame. Like all of my friends who were, most of them
sleeping with dove, you know, they weren't going
anywhere.
They were staying at least for the next, you know, five to 10 years.
I mean, for me, it was like I was worried about getting fired from a job I was trying to
quit, you know, like, like, I wanted to be a writer.
I moved, like, so basically I called them and this would have been like March of 2011.
And I said, look, I'm going to write this book.
It's going to be about media.
You're going to be partly in it.
But this is what I'm here for.
This is what I wanted to do.
And he's like, you got to talk to Tina.
You probably knew Tina.
He's like, you got to have to Tina.
She'll figure out the details with you.
And Tina was like, nobody will care.
Just we'll reduce your salary.
You just keep right.
You go live where you want to live, write your book,
and we'll need you on some stuff.
What ended up happening is like, they basically just negotiated
a salary decrease, and I still had to do the same job.
So I thought I was pulling something over on someone,
in fact, I was getting, but like.
That's the Dev Churny way.
I remember when he put me on salary at 30, he was like,
$30,000 and handshake.
I was like, oh, no.
And then later I was like, wait a minute, $30,000
and I'm working overtime every day
and I'm stocking you in Florida working with him.
Shit!
But it felt so great, you $30,000.
Yeah, yeah, it's like here's a way
that I don't have to pay you overtime.
Yeah, that's what it was.
Before I was making way more before an overtime traveling, I was an hourly, totally screwed
myself. And there I was for the next two years on that salary.
But then things would happen. And I, like, you know, moments
that I should have left. And I didn't, because I didn't want
to get fired from the job that I literally had already quit
in my head. Like it was all found, it was all house money at that point.
And still, you don't want to walk away from it.
Because it's just different quitting and getting fired are different.
Oh, absolutely.
Because you have a choice in one, even though rationally,
they're the exact same thing.
And they're both getting you what you say you want,
which is pretty and clear on this thing.
Yes, yes, yes.
So, so interesting. Yep.
Or that's the other thing is like when you find yourself like I talk about this in
Courageous Calling, you find yourself being asked to do things that you shouldn't do. You know
or not right. You go, well, I don't, if I say no, if I don't do, I'll lose my job. And you're like,
why do you want to keep a job where you can get fired for doing this thing that you know you're not
supposed to do? Yeah, just for doing what thing that you know you're not supposed to do.
Yeah, just for doing what you think is right.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like why is this an issue at all?
Those were dark days at the end.
I, it's so crazy.
I did deal with all that.
It was not, I mean, he basically descended into insanity for a lot of the reasons that
you predict in book, which is doesn't sleep.
No, the sleep deprivation is something you talk about that.
I mean, that is really the crux of so much of it.
And my sister's a clinical psychologist.
She diagnoses him.
Oh, with hyposome, so hypomania.
Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
A lot of CEOs have that.
You're up all the time.
It's called um, hyper.
Oh, I can't believe I can't think of it right now.
Yeah, it's not ADD.
It's something, it's something, it's a sort of,
it's almost like a bipolar kind of energy
which helps the person.
That's on the right side.
Yes.
You know, does he eat?
No, I really can't think of many situations
where I've ever seen him eat.
It's always the Ness Cafe.
You know, does he sleep?
No, I see him the next morning.
He's wearing the same clothes.
He's been talking on phone to me all night.
Of course he hasn't been sleeping.
Yeah, I mean, you get, you, you don't realize you're not supposed
to be getting calls from the sea.
Hyper-shymic temperament.
Does that sound right?
I think that's what you call.
That's what it is.
Yeah, I would get these calls at like three or four in the morning
and we would talk.
And it'd never be, it'd never be like, the store is on fire.
You know, it'd be like, I was thinking, what if we, you know,
it's like some, and I realized it was two things.
One, it was a control.
It was a, I'm always working.
I expect you to always be working.
I came, this is one of my little tricks,
is that every Christmas Thanksgiving,
whatever I would call him in the morning.
I would, and I would just call him for some nonsense.
Yeah.
And then he would think I was working
and then he would leave no one.
Oh, that's so interesting. But, but it was a, morning. And I would just call him for some nonsense. And then he would think I was working and then he
would leave no one. That's so interesting. But it was a control thing. And then it was something that only
now that I'm older and I my own life, I find to be quite sad, which is that he literally had no
one to talk to. He was it was a terribly sad life. And he, he was, it could have been anyone that he was calling.
But he was just talking to someone until he fell asleep
because if he had silence, then the silence might lead
to self-referencing.
Self-referencing, yeah.
And that was the deal breaker.
Yes, those late night calls.
It seemed like mostly he would call men late at night.
I'm not really sure why, but my other friends
who were managed stores, the manager,
one of the Hollywood stores, he got those calls
in the middle of the night too.
Really?
He was not really a high level employee.
He was just someone that Dev liked
and he would get those late night calls
of nothing important, just business nonsense.
It was very interesting.
Yeah, when I started my own company,
I would still do, I would sometimes call me.
I'd be like, oh, I have this idea,
it's 11, 30, I'd call someone.
And my wife was like, you can't do that.
That's not normal.
Like, that's abusive.
You know, I was like, oh, I guess.
But I was like, but I've been getting calls.
And I was like, oh, wait, yeah,
that's, this isn't what anyone signed up for.
And the people that will accept it are not the
people that you want working with. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You know what I mean? Like,
you want people who have options. Yes. Oh, absolutely. And people who have options don't want to be
called it to in the morning. Yeah. Unless it's important. Yeah. No one wants to be business all the time.
And that is Dev Charnie. Um, I sold the option for this book and they're writing
the script now, this trikes over. And they were like, we need some warm fuzzy dove moments.
And I'm like, where am fuzzy dove moments? Like, when I look back over the three years,
I can't remember any conversations that were not about work except for one. There was one time
that he talked to me about something social.
We were in Miami, it's the climax of this book, it's rough, working like crazy.
Just the two of us in the store, this store that was on Ocean Avenue, a store that
is not built for retail. It is just bars and restaurants and he signed this 10-year
lease on this incredibly expensive storefront that we were selling like two
t-shirts and a towel all day.
Probably because he visited that street when he was a teenager and it was implanted
in his memory that that somehow the American dream is to have a store on Ocean Avenue.
A block away from the Versace Mansion, which literally was a block away.
You know, right on the beach, right on the beach.
And where is that going with this?
Oh, yeah.
So we were working, working, so exhausted.
And he looks over at me and he says,
do you watch the sopranos?
I was like, oh my God, you watch this television?
Yeah.
And then I was thinking, oh my gosh, does he relate to Tony,
like a bad guy with the heart of gold?
You watch this the sopranos, huh? And so I'm sort of ready for him to, and I'm like, a bad guy with the heart of gold, you know, he watches the
sopranos, huh? And so I'm sort of ready for him to, and I'm like, yeah, I watch the sopranos.
I think it might have been the last season. I might have been that year. This is 2006, maybe.
Or it is in 2006, but I'm not sure where his pranos were. But I'm like, whoa, is it about Tony?
Like, what, what could he see? And he says, that melfy man, she is hot.
I'm like, oh God.
Yes, the psychiatrist is hot,
which at the time, you know, melfy's,
you know, an older woman, I wasn't so,
she wasn't so hot to me, but now I see.
Like, yeah, melfy is hot.
Like still, even in his, even in just talking about television,
it was like, back down to melfy is hot.
It wasn't any deeper than that.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to
us and it would really help the show.
We appreciate it.
I'll see you next episode.
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