Dee rage-flicked a pinch of Himalayan sea salt into the glop of almond butter, coconut oil, vanilla mushroom powder, maca, ashwagandha, vanilla, he shou wu, and Cordyceps currently coagulating in her $1,575 Vitamix 5201 XL Variable Speed Blender and anger-poked the pulse button.
This anti-stress smoothie better work, Gwyneth, or we’re gonna have words.
Dee could feel her heart rate rising and imagined the cortisol surging through her bloodstream, depleting her testosterone levels and decreasing her muscle mass, thereby causing her to burn fewer calories.
Oh, hell no. No, no, no.
She dumped an eight-ounce portion of the shake into a thick tumbler and took four quick gulps, then wheeled around and hauled the heavy glass against her black marble backsplash, letting the cup explode, like her temper.
The haters had been busy during the last couple of weeks, debuting a sophisticated new website and pushing out attention-grabbing social media posts at a pace that suggested a certain sophistication about timing, audience, and traction.
In these posts, the FitFamsFraud team said Dee and her leadership team were destroying something truly extraordinary, a place that drew in compassionate coaches and managers who cared deeply about the company and the clients and the culture but got a swift kick in the teeth from corporate in return.
Dee clenched her jaw. The nerve of these people. If FitFams was extraordinary, it was because Dee made it that way. It didn’t belong to the coaches and managers. It belonged to Dee. Until she sold it for millions of dollars.
And this kind of campaign could be bad for the deal.
On their site and in their posts, the anti-Dee activists continued their calls for the creation of a coaches’ and managers’ union and shared anonymous anecdotes full of outrageous claims that she could easily pick apart:
Studio Managers were once forced to fast for 36 hours during a retreat (wrong: it was 24 hours).
Dee once aggressively flashed her crotch at a coach during a FitFams party (wrong: she flashed her tits, such as they are, and the coach liked it).
A FitFams studio in Chicago opened a year ago and still does not have a Certificate of Occupancy (wrong: it opened seven months ago).
A coach suffered a torn rotator cuff from pushing herself too hard during demos and, when she asked for some time off to recuperate, was accused of “wussing out” and “selfishly leaving the company and the clients in the lurch.” (wrong again: Dee definitely would’ve said “pussying out”).
The verbal and emotional abuse heaped on coaches and managers was so intense and frequent that several unnamed employees suffered emotional breakdowns. One had been hospitalized.
Dee snort-laughed at the last one. Was this for real? Had she somehow managed to hire a fluttering puff of glittering snowflakes, so intricate and delicate that if you looked upon them with anything other than a beatific smile they would melt?
Were they really so fragile? She knew their bones weren’t made of toothpicks, because then they’d all be skinny.
If there was one thing she’d learned from the many nights she’d spent with her eyes squeezed shut, catching quick gasps of air under Franklin’s sweaty weight, it was that no matter what anyone ever did or said to her, Dee would never be a victim. Ever. And it was disgusting to see these coddled-baby coaches and managers say that they were victims. That Dee had victimized them.
And then there was Willa. Average, un-special Willa. Apparently she was now in cahoots with the FitFamsFraud people, picking out their color scheme, designing their new logo, and building their website. Jimmy had discovered this during a search for clues about the FitFamsFraud founders’ identities.
Willa, a basic bitch who had been plucked from B-list-coaching obscurity in Atlanta. A nobody whom Dee had made into a somebody. And this was the thanks she got?
Didn’t Willa realize that she was expendable? Didn’t she know that if she left the company it would immediately and seamlessly go on without her? Her photo would be erased from the website, her left-behind water bottle tossed into a Dumpster. It would be as if Willa had never been there, had never existed at all.
What a goddamn traitor.
Dee picked up her phone and rage-scrolled through Willa’s Instagram photos. Shot after shot of her smiling at the studio and gushing about how much she loved it, how it was a safe and special place. Yet at the same time she was actively and clandestinely working to undermine it.
The FitFamsFraud folks tried to make it sound like they weren’t self-hating fake-feminists who wanted to take down a more successful woman. They tried to act like they were saving the soul of the company. Willa herself had gone so far as to openly comment on some of FitFamsFraud’s posts, claiming it was possible to support their efforts to “improve” the workplace while still admiring and appreciating what Dee had done.
“This isn’t about taking anyone down,” Willa had written in a comment on FitFamsFraud’s Instagram. “It’s about building everyone up.”
Puke.
Dee had more respect for the commenters who were transparently hateful. At least they were genuine. They claimed the company was buckling under her dictatorship and that she had created a “toxic cesspool of body dysmorphia, greed, and loathing.”
She almost had to laugh. A toxic cesspool? What made these people think they could get away with this? What made Willa think she wouldn’t have to pay a price?
Dee picked up her phone and dialed Tara. Straight to voicemail. What the hell? She’d been largely MIA for weeks now. She tried Cora and got through.
“So I think we need to have a get-together with some of our ‘favorite’ managers,” Dee said. “A big night out, to celebrate their efforts to ‘strengthen’ our company. Bring them here, show them a good time, that sort of thing.”
If the bite in her voice raised any alarm bells for Cora, she didn’t show it.
“I think that can be arranged,” Cora said.
Good for you, Willa, but be careful!