What's fleet would my Max? I'm Robert Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about the album Rumors, which was written by a bunch of people who when they were making it, we're all bastards to one another. Uh oh yeah. With me with me today to talk about Rumors is a Cody Johnston and Katie Stole. How are we doing today?
Everybody so good, so thrilled to be here to talk about Rumors with you.
You know what I always think about.
I always think about how hard it must have been to be Christy McVie. Yeah, oh god, yeah, you got Stevie Nicks there.
What do you do?
She was wonderful. R I p uh huh, absolutely wonderful. You got a little out shown shined.
Yeah, yeah, outshun. It's hard. It's hard to it's hard to be up against that, you know. I'm sure she was aware of it, and I think that I think that that bleeds through. That's part of the part of the feel that uh you know that that that the album has. But who's favorite song on Rumors? Favorite song?
What?
What? What do we got? Is everyone just going to say the chain I.
Was gonna say I was going to say.
It's too hard to not.
Great about.
I was talking about this over the weekend, just like Flo Back in general, they're an amazing band because like you'll hear a song and you'll know that it's necessarily Fleetwood Mac because they've got such a wide range sound and vocalists.
But yeah, I was gonna say the Chain.
Yeah, it's hard, but there's a lot. Yes, it's the Chain. Are you talking? I also like throw your own way?
Yeah, jam a woman old A side and B side?
Are we talking old dust woman? Like there's A and B Why would why would you split them up? Yeah?
Dreams, I'm sorry, there's so many.
Dreams, Silver Sobers. Yeah, Secondhand News I think would be mine after after the Chain. That's just such a fucking banger.
You're right, there's Second News.
Oh my god, what a great album, What an incredible album.
Should we start playing it now?
Yeah?
Just listen to to rumors and think about how all of the lives lost in the cocaine industry were worth it? Thank god, thank god. No, we should probably get on. This is uh, you know, a podcast, you know what, you know what the business is, right, We've been doing this for five years. You guys have been on dozens of times. Probably Now we're doing a little bit of a different thing this year. We have another court case
to go over. The last time I had y'all both on, we talked about the big lawsuit against Fox News, and we went through the legal filing that Dominion's lawyers had against that after all the discovery. Today we are reading through a legal complaint from Wolf from Arnold, Eric Frozy, Tracy Hawkins, Joseph Killian, Laura, Shan Pitite, Lars and Andrew schlakesher Man. Why did all of you have complicated names to say? Unbelievable? So these guys are all honestly yeah, yeah,
I'm I'm against them already. Oh wait, no, they're suing Elon Musk, so I'm back on their side. So each of these people are former longtime employees of Twitter, and I'm very frustrated by this legal document from the start, because the first sentence of the introduction reads, plaintiffs are each longtime former employees of Twitter, and then in parentheses colloquially and hereafter referred to as tweeps. Wait, the tweets, they're the tweets.
T sweeps.
Oh, tweets, but they're choosing to be referred to as tweeps.
That is too tweet. That's too tweet.
Yeah, waity, what is.
Going on with you? Is it that like they legitimately had so much pride in old Twitter that they had to do this because it's a bad decision, like legally legal.
Yeah?
Did did the tweets decide to call themselves the tweets?
I can't imagine their lawyer insisted on it, right, It depends.
Yeah.
That was a big part of the culture, right there was it was that was used to talk about them, and it was on all their little merchant stuff. Yeah, but we're talking in the law.
Maybe you don't need to do that.
Yeah, maybe you could.
Yeah the alleys you want to be taken seriously, Yeah, yeah.
They could have.
I mean, twits is right there, but I guess right there on connotation the twarps.
Yeah. So you know, uh, these these people who the the lawsuit and forms has have more than sixty years of collective experience working for the company, were all either fired or constructively discharged by Twitter right after Musk took over. Some of these guys were pretty senior. There's a vice president in there, there's a global lead in there when they they got ship quote, and due to that seniority, some of them were in the room where it happened.
After Musk's takeover of Twitter, privy to and participants in high level discussions and deliberations among Twitter's new leadership. After the merger led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants who were internally referred to as the Transition Team, Twitter's new leadership deliberately, specifically and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.
And they put those words into action. Plaintiff Killium was forced to resign from Twitter after being repeatedly and specifically directed to violate California's building codes in ways that potentially put tweep lives at risk. See, if you say it like that, you're making a very serious allegation. And I can't take it seriously when people's lives, yeah, lives.
Because I was immediate like tweep yeah. No.
Also, I'm okay with tweeps dying. You know, I'm not okay with people dying, but tweets. But tweets, that's some other thing. Yeah.
Uh.
When they say the phrase they were in the room where it happened? Is that in italics?
No, it's in quotation marks. I think it's a reference to that book by that Trump staffer, in the room where it happened.
I think it also, knowing the content and context and the fact they're calling someone's sweeps, I think it also might be a Hamilton reference.
Oh my god, are you kidding.
Herd Hamilton's in Yeah.
Oh yeah, there is from Hamilton and Hamilton.
Yeah.
I was on one of those streamers and I watched the I.
Watched it, stomach it because of living well.
I couldn't. I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
Oh my god.
He' Julie Corney, and I think he's shouldn't have been the guy in the in the show, but the room yourself shouldn't be there whatever.
The room where it happened is the White House memoir of John Bolton, former National Security advisor. So they're either at John Bolton reference either way, I'm not.
It's definitely.
Question guys and girls, everyone, do you want us?
Do you want us to take you?
Seriously? Don't call yourself sweeps.
Don't get yourself sweeps and don't reference either Hamilton or John Bolton legal filing.
Don't pitch yeah the first three sentences.
Like you are alleging that Elon Musk ordered you to violate California building codes in a way that put human lives at risk. You don't need to be tweet like. We don't need to make this like like I'm just I'm very frustrated.
You don't need to put on a pants suit and sing hallelujah.
Well, yeah, of the fucking Twitter old guard. Yeah, very funny. I expected to be more immediately on board with the people suing Elon Musk because I hate him so much, but they have done the hard work of making me right in the middle so far I am. Yeah, I am steering down the median on a fucking crotch rocket at the at the moment, so in ways that potentially put tweep lives at risk in building the Twitter hotel rooms Musk wanted for tweets he would be pushing to
work through the night. Plaintiff Hawkins was forced to resign after Musk and his transition team fundamentally changed the nature of her job and threatened her professional reputation by directing Twitter to breach its leases and essentially steal space from its landlords. Elon doesn't play rent. They're still doing a little I'm stealing space from landlords I don't know.
Again, I'm very frustrated against.
Because like the thing that Elon's that comes next is like he one of Elon's transition team members told Hawkins Elon doesn't pay rent, And Elon told me he would only pay rent over his dead body, And I'm frustrated at the degree of like again, especially since he spent so much time like flipping out over crime and San Francisco.
He's like this big law and order fascist weirdo. Now the fact that he just refuses to pay rent, like fuck him, Like that makes me extra angry for Elon Musk, but also, like, I don't know the the it is hard to make someone get too outraged about stealing from like a giant corporate landlord. Yes, there's a lot of tension here if you want to, if you want me to be like, well, maybe there's one cool corporate landlord I don't know send in like mercenaries to force Twitter
out of their offices. Right, there's an impound their servers. You know, like be a real asshole about it, and then at least you'll be a cool, like corporate ghoul. You know, go for it, guys, do do what Think about? Think about what that guy, the bad guy in RoboCop would do in this situation. You know, he would send he would send Bodiker in to like fucking beat the shit out of Elon Musk when he's having a cocaine party. You know that that's what he'd you know, I don't know.
Yeah, if at two oh nine destroyed Twitter's offices, I'd be like, all.
Right, well, I'd be like, what okay, Okay, one landlord gets to stay a landlord. So both Killian and Hawkins were told that from Musk, the fact that Twitter was legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would be irrelevant to the decision of whether to actually pay it when that amount came due. That must operate it on a zero cost basis, and that Twitter would therefore simply decide afresh for each significant expense whether or not
it wanted to pay what it owed. This seems very illegal, but he's got enough money that it's not right, like because he can just hold it up in court for forever and yeah, it'll be fine. It's very frustrating. There's a lot of people on the streets in San Francisco because they couldn't pay you know, what they owed in rent or whatever, and Elon's just going to continue advocating they'd be put in death camps. I guess that's cool, exactly.
It is interesting how differently we treat these two very different Uh.
Yes, examples of rentivation, Like.
I would be surprised if the total number of people evicted in San Francisco last year, like the amount that they owed that got them evicted, equalled what Musk has failed to pay on his properties.
Yeah, it's just thinking about yeah, yeah, anyway, okay.
And back on board with yeah, back on with the tweets. The tweets say that Musk flatly refused to pay them. They're contractually required severance. This was severance that Twitter and Musk had in order to induce tweets to stay through the close of the merger, promise would be paid if Musk conducted a layoff in which Twitter and ex Holdings had bound themselves to pay under the terms of the
merger agreement. Seems clear that they owed this money. Uh. And basically the alliation is that Musk never even intended to pay people, right, Like he was just lying to get people to work without pay, which is like, I don't know, that's in like the the neighborhood. That's like, that's that's that's that's illegal, Like you're not allowed to make people work without getting them.
No, I would say, it's not just in the neighborhood.
It's staunchly like, yeah, that seems like crimey.
That's like the town.
Even if it's not crimey, it's unethical and immoral and he's a bad person.
I'll just there.
Yeah, but how could it not be crimey?
Yeah. Musk went so far as to insist publicly that tweeps he fired are not entitled to any severance at all beyond warn act notice. In hindsight, it appears that he also inserted a legally ineffective, specific no third party beneficiaries clause in the merger agreements provisions relating to severance in a failed attempt to prevent tweeps from enforcing those provisions.
Plaintiffs bring this action for a declaratory judgment against the merger agreement and the related but independent promises and representations to the tweeps entitle them to the promise severance to recover that severance, as well as punitive damages for defendant's flavorant bad faith. YadA YadA YadA. They quote a bunch of laws that Musk probably did in fact break. Yeah, So uh we go in we we detail the case
of like a couple of these these people. They're just kind of like listing their work histories, which I don't feel like we need to know for any particularly reading. Yeah, worked at Twitter, spent a lot of time as a as a tweeper, tweeping up, you know, pretty hard. Defendant Musk is, on information and belief, a citizen of the state of Texas residing in Bokachka, Texas. I wonder how much time he spends in Boka, Chica. But people have been allowed to fake being from Texas for forever. We
had a whole president do it once. Look at look at look it up people. All right, So now we're up to the factual background statement here. This litigation arises out of Twitter's Sorry My Mouse. This litigation arises out of Twitter's attempt to avoid paying its ex employees. The Sefarence that promised them. Twitter made these promises many times and in many ways. Twitter made these promises in their
initial offer letters to the plaintiffs. Twitter made the same promise explicit in its agreement to sell the company to Musk, negotiating for a clause in the agreement that protected its employees by ensuring they would have seen received seference at least as favorable during the post merger period as they
had under the old management. And Twitter man went out of its way to make additional promises and representations to its employees to allay their concerns in advance of its purchase by Musk and to convince them to stay employed at Twitter. Penning the close of this transaction, Twitter broke all these promises, breaching its enforceable agreements with its former
employees in the process. Now I'm going to say this right now, I suspect the people who sold Twitter to Musk, the former people running it, the former board, were well aware that all these employees were going to get fucked and simply didn't care because they got their bag right.
Yeah, that's why the deal was made. Because I have had them so much.
I don't have any sympathy or uh. I don't know care for the people that sold Twitter in general.
No, no, I mean I I yeah. It seems like they ought to be liable to some extent too. There's some sort of due diligence they should. I'm sure they did enough legally. I don't think they're actually they actually have any exposure there. I just think it's in more. Yeah. So it just kind of goes through the details of the merger, the details of like how they set up
this severance agreement. So Twitter committed to providing employees with two months base salary or incentive based salary for sales employees, pro rated performance bonuses through as through all as though all triggers for such bonuses has been hit. The cash value of any RSUs those are like internal stock units that would have vested within three months of separation cash contribution through the continuance of healthcare coverage. So it's like
a pretty good severance agreement. I think it's better than we got it cracked. Yeah you know that right, Yeah, that sounds what they.
I can't speak to that because they never hired me.
Yeah. Well they yeah, I corporate America something none of us have any issues with. I don't know all these tweets. Yeah, these tweets seemed like they were promised a pretty sweet deal if they stayed on to like ensure the company didn't fall apart right before the deal and then Musk immediately months Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So they list some of the different things that like, you know, Musk said during the process of like that whole back and forth of or whether or not he was going
to acquire it. The lawsuit against Twitter. Okay, here we get to a point where we have that's titled Twitter's employees are worried about the pending Musk takeover, and Twitter makes representations to address their concerns. This should be some inside gossip. With the promise of Twitter being acquired by one of its fiercest critics, many tweets were understandably very concerned about their future, particularly the particular about the potential
effects of the merger and their jobs. Layoffs had already been discussed as a possibility even prior to the acquisition, and it was widely reported that cuts would be needed as a consequence of the additional debt that Twitter was incurring as part of the acquisition. Given his criticisms, it was also viewed that Musk would make additional material changes
at Twitter. Twitter took these concerns very seriously. If a significant number of tweets were worried enough about their future to seek new employment, it would harm Twitter's ability to continue to function smoothly while the deal was in process. Twitter therefore took several steps to reassure its employees they negotiated this merger agreement d D. Let me get down
here to the next set of good stuff. Twitter also benefited from a degree of stability via employee retention during the pendency of the acquisition and the related litigation that reduced the chances of an acquisition threatening material adverse event, protecting the chances the deal would be consummated, and Musk and extending an offer to entice employees to stay pending his acquisition, also received stability the promise of a company that would be when he completed his takeover, largely in
the condition it was made before the offer, allowing him to begin to reshape Twitter from a stable foundation. Nevertheless, tweeps remained concerned about the consequences of the acquisition. Twitter issued an acquisition FAQ to provide employees with a resource The FAQ detailed reassurances and representations to employees regarding their compensation,
how equity grants would be handled. It explicitly stated that in the event of a layoff, any employees whose job would be is impacted would be eligible for a severance. They had meetings and stuff about this. Twitter orally communicated to its employees that Musk had made the severance stability
promise and the merger agreement. Yeah. Yeah. At one point to tweet posted to Twitter's internal slack, tagging Twitter's c suite leadership and communicating that the details of twitter severance would be critical to employees' decisions to remain pending the
close of the merger. So yeah, they're really building a case here that, like the entire both the value to the people who owned Twitter and ran it previously and the value to Musk was reliant upon folks staying and keeping the site stable, and that they had to do that. To do that, both of them basically had to run
a con on the workforce of Twitter. I think it's been more of a con on Musk than it has been on like He's It has kind of fallen apart for him as well, because the news just came out today that the company's valued at about a third of what it was when he bought it.
But I laughed out loud.
Both of them definitely like had to screw over all of these people in order to in order to carry out their plans. Like, it seems pretty clear what was going on all around here.
Yeah, they just wanted everyone to shut up so they could make the deal happen.
Yeah, Almost immediately upon a Musk's arrival at Twitter, he instead purported to terminate executives for cause on information and belief. This occurred in some cases within hours of the takeover. In fact, on information and belief, Musk did not even intend to have Twitter pay the director's office and officers in dimnification and insurance premiums as required by section six
point six of the merger agreement. On information and belief, a Twitter employee with access to Twitter's accounts and capacity to execute the payment, made that payment despite musk specific objections preventing a brief a breach of the merger agreement, and this employee was fired for doing so. So. Basically, Musk was required to pay like in dimnification and insurance premiums as part of the merger agreement, which is like that's something he's required to do under state law to
keep the company like functioning legally. And he directed an employee to like cancel the payment because he's saying basically, don't pay money for anything. And so this person follows the law and makes the payment and Musk fires them. Wow, very funny. Yeah, leadership, Yeah, no, no, yeah, so obviously, I mean it is that yeah, yeah, what's episode?
Oh just that broken brain thing of just like you're so rich and powerful and you have this idea of yourself and your view that you're like, just don't do it, just don't do anything right, just like it doesn't matter, Like the idea of like buying this company and just like we're not going to spend any money and if we do, you're fired.
It's like the the idea that would work out for him.
Well, just when you're that rich and powerful, you get away with lots of stuff.
Look at him not paying rent.
I mean yeah, and you.
Think you can and I mean maybe he can, and nothing will come of this.
It's like, are you really? Yeah.
It's interesting also seeing all this stuff because first we saw it, as one might call it secondhand news.
Yeah, her back in.
The day when you get like these little little tidbits, these little snippets of like, yeah, this person said that he did this, and just seeing it all laid out in this legal complaint is interesting.
It is interesting, and I think so a lot of this is kind of going over the stuff that was reported one way or the other, like as it was happening. So if you don't remember, back on November third, twenty twenty two, after the acquisition, he sent out an email basically saying, Hey, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow and you'll know who's getting shit canned. The next day,
November fourth, they fired half of the company. It seems like the layoffs were largely organized by SpaceX and Tesla employees who sort of like came in and help him build lists. Yeah, yeah, he brought in That's what's alleged here at leaset on information Belief. Musk. You used engineers from his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX to help determine which tweets would be included in the November fourth layoff and.
Then sorry, putting engineers in charge of that.
Yeah, especially since so much of the jobs aren't engineering, like for example being the people who pay to keep mandated and shit.
Yeah no, it's just like this like weird like billionaire engineer brain.
Imagine like people in HR or people that are trained for these kinds of conversation is one thing, but engineers.
Yeah, also like the people who are worse at I don't know, managing, Like do.
You think that they just got people in the room and played go your own way?
Yeah, you should go your own way? Man? What a b No, you nailed it. So yeah yeah yeah. So you know, at this point, Twitter's been been gutted, you know, much like a big game hunter who gets impaled by a tusk.
There we go, like TV Nicks in that breakup. But I like you, well yeah that's.
That all that works too. So the next thing that happens is they start firing people after this like first wave of layoffs. You know, those are they're agreeing to pay severance and they're gonna fuck with a lot of those people on severance. But in order to avoid paying severance, the next thing that that Twitter does is they start over the next few days firing even more people saying
they were in violation of Twitter policy. These are four cause terminations, so like they don't have to do the same things they have to do in like layoffs are e severance. So it's I mean, it's it's it's fuckery.
It's also like bad for people's careers. It's one thing if like yeah, that company, the the the boss gutted it and everybody got laid off, but they didn't necessarily do anything wrong that doesn't necessarily hurt your chances of getting hired again, as opposed to like getting fired for violating company policy, which can which is yeah yeah, or for paying a mandated insurance yeah.
Uh.
You know who does follow the law.
Possibly products and services?
It has to be it is, it is we most do they nearly all of them do. I mean we are. We are sponsored by the Sina Loa cartel, who have a little bit of a history of rule breaking, but for the most part, all of our sponsors are law abiding. Mm hmm.
Or girl, m m.
Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, we're back, We're back, and we're going to continue because, as our fans always say, don't stop. Oh boy, yeah yeah, yeah, this is really the episode of some of our fans as dreams. Oh boy, we should.
We can't break this too far.
Yeah, no, yeah, there out, So I accidentally started playing rumors.
On my phone.
Yeah, I mean a lot of the allegations against Musk are based on well, you know, the phrase they use is based on information and belief. But what is that if not rumors? Too much readful in it?
Like yeah it ugh, yes, we're having fun.
Good stuff. Good stuff. So the next thing that Musk announces is that Twitter's ending its remote work policy and all workers have to immediately report to a physical Twitter office. This was a real problem for people who lived like hundreds of miles from Twitter offices and could not do this. Musk updated the policy after this was pointed out to him and said that Twitter would allow for a transition period for remote workers who live too far away to
move to a location closer to Twitter. That's a good decision to like, uproot your entire life and move across country for a job that appears to be collapsing.
Every map does need you there, yeah, and probably won't exist in like six ynths.
That seems like a good call. Later, the policy morphed into one in which managers could allow their reports to work remotely if they chose to, but would themselves be fired if the employees they allowed to work from home did not perform up to Musk's undefined and unarticulated standards. What a great working environment.
Well, he's just a very articulate person.
No, no, he's dumb and kind of an asshole.
Yeah, so the owner of a social media communication platform is so bad at communicating, Well, he's not.
He's he bought it, you know, like he purchased. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty cool. So in mid November, Musk sends another email with a link to an online form and
an ultimatum. Any Twitter employee who wanted to keep their job at Twitter would need to affirmatively indicate their consent by checking a box on an online form to a more hardcore working environment, which would mean long hours at high intensity and in a transparent attempt to avoid the severance obligation to which he had bound himself, Musk unilaterally decreed that employees who did not affirmatively check the box would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned in exchanged for
two months of non working leave in a single month's post separation pay. That's cool.
What, Yeah, How you run a company? You show your employees that you're gonna do a good job.
Well, it's really important.
Doesn't he want people to like have kids and raise a family, but like he also want them to like spend like twelve hours a day sleeping at the office.
Yeah, I'm not sure that.
Well.
Does he want everybody to have kids and raise a family also? Well, also types of people that have kids and rais also have.
Fraternity and maternity leave for his employees as well.
But he doesn't want his employees doing that.
Other people have contradictions that one is, yeah, vaguely, other people should be doing that.
So, as part of this wave of layoffs, a substantial number of employees were laid off because they did not immediately affirmatively agree to the material changes to their working conditions that Musk had demanded, and yet that still wasn't enough. After the November seventeenth layoff, Musk again turned to engineers from his other companies to conduct code reviews of co written code written by Twitter employees. The code reviews were
clear pretext to attempt additional four cause firings. The reviewers lacked the context to meaningful evaluate the code, and the reviews were completed in an amount of time. It was clearly insufficient for any good faith approach of the task. After the code reviews, Twitter fired multiple employees on the pretext that their work was not up to standard. Many of those employees had received uniformly positive performance reviews prior
to being fired. Other employees were put on performance improvement plans in a transparent attempt to lay the groundwork for future four cause firings. The slap dash bad faith nature of these reviews was open and obvious. Some managers acknowledged that they were instructed to stack rank their employees so that at least some of the employees in each group would be fired or placed on performance improvement plans, even
if all were performing adequately. Other managers specifically informed employees that the managers had placed on pips that the employees could keep doing what they were doing because their performance did not require improvement. Other managers could not identify the standard by which they had assessed particular performance as requiring improvement, and at least some fired employees were informed that they had been fired by mistake and asked to return to work.
All told on information and believe Twitter laid off, fired, or engineered the resignations of over five thousand employees within less than two months.
That's beautiful stuff, real, real impressive leadership right there.
I was going to just say, firing all of this stuff is very time consuming. All of the work that's being put into fucking over the employees and firing them and then whoopsies are the ones that arguably too much attention when there's vital things that need to be done at the company.
Anyway, Sorry, Cody, what were you going to say?
Oh, no, that's true.
It's just there's He did that interview, an interview recently where they talked about this, and basically he's like, yeah, we're going to try to hire a bunch of people back, and maybe people we fired will want to come back, like very recently, Like this is the plan, and it's just souse. He didn't even like I saw some Twitter Blue subscribers be like, oh I love I love this because, like, you know, being able to own your mistakes.
No, no, no, he didn't say it was a mistake. He said that he had to do it. This is all.
This is all in the pretext that like I have to get rid of this many people. I have to And now that he did, he's like, well, we'll hire them back. That's still not admitting the mistake. He's still saying he had to do it. He's just saying he's going to do this new thing now.
And it's very funny that he thinks these people are going to return to work, because I guarantee you they are never going back again.
Oh my god, Katie got Oh my gosh.
Here, Oh man, it's just.
Love it.
Nom. That's something no one has ever said to Elon.
Musk No, no, they know.
Oh fuck. So let's go to the story of one of the people who's a party to this lawsuit, plaintiff Hawkins. Hawkins was Twitter's vice president of real Estate and Workplace, responsible for its office leases and managing its offices. So you can tell this person's not going to be long for the company because Elon's no longer dealing with any of that. Yeah. Uh, debt debt DA DA talks about her whole career, which I don't really care about, but yeah,
so she's not opposed. It says that she was not opposed to the merger or the concept of Muscus, Twitter's new CEO. She received word of the impending merger deal while on family vacation, didn't know a lot about Musk at the time. I don't think that's possible, but okay, it just seems weird that you wouldn't know a lot about Elon Musk and live in the Bay and the tech industry.
But yeah, maybe I guess it is like you cannot know about him, but you can. He's the Tesla guy.
Yeah, he's the Tesla guy. That's probably what she means, given the uncertainty her focus in the period leading up to the merger. In the leadership she provided her team since round one, basic principle, let's focus on doing our jobs and protecting our people. During the pendency of the merger, employee attention was a critical concern, as we've talked about Yaha, YadA, yadda Musk okay at the closing of the As the closing of the merger approached, Musk's behavior heightened Hawkins' concerns.
He showed up to an all hands meeting exactly once, arriving late and spending his time talking about extraterrestrials. Oh, that's so funny, is.
That the I bet that's the one where he also talked about gizmos and how he likes gizmos.
That maybe I think that may come a little bit later, but it's very clear he was talking about aliens this whole time, and all of these twoops were just saying, I don't want to know.
It's so right, it's so he's such a work.
It's just like one of those that he thinks he's so interesting and like, oh everyone's so boring. I have great conversations, but he's only got these stock things he has, like a thing he says about aliens and other thing he says about simulations, and that's it, Like that's his idea of like, yeah, it's.
Very much like a push button get Bacon attitude to comedy.
Yeah, but like he thinks it's like this like deep, like interesting conversation that goes beyond his one like talking point about it.
M M. But you know, yep, maybe stuff.
Maybe he's not. Maybe he's fascinating, so.
He shows up once he bullshits about aliens. Even after that meeting, Hawkins kept an open mind, hoping that Musk's odd behavior would not impact his leadership when she took over Twitter, and the employees were part of his team, but Hawkins also formed a strong determination to remain at Twitter at least throughout a new transition period in order to shepherd her team through the transition. The reality of Musk's new directives and operation of Twitter almost immediately shattered
that determination. Upon Musk's arrival at Twitter, he brought with him a transition team of executives and sycophants from his other companies, from whom Musk directed Twitter's employees to take direction. This is the transition team. He also brought over Tesla engineers too. Upon information and belief make retention and termination
to decisions. The transition team decreed that no managers were allowed to communicate with their teams via Slack, which just like just nukes the business, right, like, this is the only way we communicate for most things, and you're like, nobody gets to do this. They froze all payments to vendors until they could be verified. No explanations were ever given as to what this meant or why it was
being done. Yeah, it basically Twitter was just breaching contracts and mass without like informing the vendors or the employees communicating with these vendors as to why face with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding invoices with
no reasonable expectation of timely payment. Many of these vendors informed Twitter that they would not be performing further work for Twitter until those invoices were paid, which is, by the way, part of why DeSantis's announcement was a failure is that Twitter hadn't paid a major vendor that was responsible for like keeping Twitter spaces up and online space. Yeah, very funny. But you know who does all their vendors because their vendors are me, they pay you over and
do our ads. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's who I get paid. Yeah, so help me get paid? H terrible?
Did you get paid? Did you get paid? H?
Yeah? We're back and I'm I'm counting up my money. I'm counting up my money, which is why everyone calls me the gold dust woman. I don't know that one was going to be hard to fit in that.
That's good. That was really good, but I mean a.
Little too much.
It is your show.
You did? You did both? Miss one that I did a little bit ago.
What did you do?
Yeah?
I was.
I was pretty pretty proud about this, but yeah, I've I've also forgotten which one I did. I missed one. Listeners you can go search for it. It was. It was like seven minutes ago. You know, nobody, nobody commented on it. Pull up the pull up the set list for rumors and figure out which one I did. That's a little more. You'll get a prize, You'll get a price. I'm not going to tell you what it is. And like Elon Musk, I will probably not follow through with
this promise. But you know, lie funny, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm telling you sweet little lies man, good stuff. So yeah, Twitter fired these vendors when they were, like, you know, had had issue with not getting paid. Musk attempted to halt the payment of his employees contractually mandated November rs US like these people were guaranteed by their contracts a certain like number of vested like internal stock units that he's just saying, attempting to not pay people. God, what
a piece of shit. Robert Cayden was fired shortly after the November vest payments went through on information belief. Caden was fired because of his actions and making the November RSU payment and compliance with Twitter's obligations over Musk subjections. Delana Brand, Twitter's chief people officer and Hawkins's direct manager, handed in her notice within days after the merger closed, because she was disgusted at how people were being treated honor.
About October thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Hawkins attended a meeting with Steve Davis, Jared Birchall, and many of Twitter's global leaders. In that meeting, Davis announced several changes that voted ill for Hawkins's team in her role at Twitter. First, he announced that Twitter's sourcing and procurement team should handle all lease negotiations from that point forward, despite lacking both personnel
and experience sufficient to handle this task. Next, he announced that the company would no longer be working with brokers to procure negotiate leases. This choice ran in conflict with every established standard and practice of commercial real estate management. And obviously this is like a massive burden on the in house staff, which has just been like cut viciously. The only justification given for changes was Elon wants this very Soon thereafter, Davis informed Hawkins that Twitter needed to
five find five hundred million dollars in annual savings. So to do this, just a half a billion, Yeah, Sophie, By the way, I'd like us to find half a billion dollars in savings this year. For the company. Can we can we get the team on that, you know, sure? Maybe, yeah, get the engineers on that. Sure, yeah, yeah, I'm willing to cut out coffee. Garrison's going to need to find like three or four hundred million dollars and uh yeah, together,
I think that'll do it. My hundred million dollars in coffee and another three or four hundred million dollars we can make it.
Yeah, sure, I think that might be too much coffee anyway.
Yeah, I mean you're probably right for my heart. No, I should just switch to cocaine again. That's that was just like twenty or thirty million a year.
So I was gonna say tea maybe maybe switch to te.
Wow, I don't know about that English.
Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't think Fleetwood Mac did too much tea, but.
Yeah, yeah, rumors wasn't made on Earl Gray, that was made on China white anyway. To accomplish this, each global lead was given a massive spreadsheet that had to be filled out every single day, identifying possible savings opportunities. Hawkins' spreadsheet covered thirty locations in upwards of fifty leashes. The pressure to fill in the spreadsheet on time was immense. Expectations from above made it clear that compliance was prioritized
above accuracy. That's a good You know you're making a good team when people are like, you don't actually need to do your job as long as you're on time.
That is wild.
That's so funny. That's super funny.
It's that that Marvel thing where like like five months ago they were like, we're gonna stop focusing on quantity and start focusing on quality.
It's like, yeah, you gotta do it before.
How would you describe what you were doing prior to this?
Make sure it's good first.
Yeah, oh god, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty good stuff. For example, Twitter instructed Hawkins to identify leases for cancelation. When she identified potential sites and leases that could be terminated for cost savings, Hawkins and her team took the time to document risk factors involved in downsizing or terminating
these leases. One of the big things is that like if you break a lease, certainly you often have to pay a fee, Like if you do that with your apartment, you might have to pay like an extra month of rent. If you do that for like a giant corporate lease for thousands of workers. It could be significantly more.
Money, one would imagine.
Yeah, and it notes when the time came to present their conclusions, this added context was not well received. When informed of the risks of termination fees during a meeting on November third, twenty twenty two, Steve Davis said, well, we just won't pay those. We just won't pay landlords. Davis also tour to Hawkins, we just won't pay rent. Those are direct quotes from Davis per Hawkins's best recollection, to the extent that they are not word for word
as they're extremely tight paraphrase. Ada Hawkins is shocked because part of her job, like is reputation based, Like I am the person managing leases for this company, and we will make meet our obligations.
Yeah time we paid, Yeah.
Yeah paid.
In general we pay again.
It's one of those things that in order for Elon to meet his cost saving goals, this woman has to like destroy her future in the business knowing that she will immediately get shit canned as soon as possible. It's just like such a gross guy and way of looking at people and looking at business like it's hard to he doesn't look Yeah, no, he is incapable of of like seeing or caring about human beings.
Which tools or little pieces for him? Yeah, lack of a plan.
I guess players only love you when they're playing.
Yeah, that's that's what everyone says about Elon Musk.
So I see it.
It's okay, a lot of these are going to be half assed guys, but you know, like we're just not going to make it all them all work very well. Unwilling to be involved in, let alone responsible for such thefts, Hawkins resigned the next day. He is asking her to steal. She did so despite her internal commitment to remain through the transition to protect her team, because she had no other choice. Yeah, I get that. That that kind of scans like he is saying, I need you to commit
a series of crimes for me. Elon Musk a man incapable of loyalty.
So yeah, but that's the other thing, Like there's no like there's just even if you're like on his good side at one point.
It's worth nothing.
Yeah, it's worth nothing, and you're worth nothing to him. And as soon as you even.
Like not even like uh barely a challenge will turn him around.
And then you're going who becomes the scapegoat for things. Actually, in this situation which it hit the fan, you know, they're more likely to get wrapped up in that. Elon Musk isn't clearly he invaded all of it. We've all seen succession, I think, right, we've seen it.
Maybe Robert hasn't.
No, yeah, it happens. Yeah, I don't know what, Like, I get why she did what she did. So Killian is the next person we talked about. Joseph Killian. He was Twitter's global head of construction and Design. He was immediately given Hawkins's duties after she quits. He worked directly with the transition team and was directed by Steve Davis and Liz Jenkins, who worked for the Boring Company, and Pablo Mendoza, a venture capitalist who invested with Musk. Yeah,
so that's that's that's cool. Oh god, oh god. Yeah. I mean it's a big scam, but they still are a company. They dug that stupid hole in Las Vegas. I went through. That was like, you dumb as fuck.
They're not a company anymore.
I mean they have engaged in what are effectively a series of like roping in local governments to agree to work with him, and then actually.
Like ye and pulling it out and then like canceling other uh yeah, more viable transportation plans.
Yeah, just to fuck with like public transportation. So I just noted like this guy Killian gets given Hawkins his job and he's being managed by Steve Davis and Liz Jenkins who work for the boring company, and then there's this bit which is amazing. Killian was also directed in these activities by Nicole Hollander. On information and Belief, Hollander was not employed by any of Musk's companies. On information and belief, Hollander is Steve Davis's girlfriend than the mother
of his child. So Musk's Musks like Transition team are just like hiring their girlfriends to manage the people in committing real estate fraud.
It's amazing where it's like, yeah, if you like, say, my god.
On information believe, Hollander was living at Twitter headquarters with Davis and their infant child, who was a older what the fuck?
Yeah, family values awesome.
Despite not being employed by any of Musk's companies, Hollander nonetheless had full instructional authority over Killian and the rest of his team with regards to the Transition Almost immediately, Musk's zero cost basis policy reared its head. Killian was informed by the transition team that he would have to justify his spin to Musk personally, and that if Musk was not convinced that the expenses were necessary, he would simply default on his contractual obligations and let the expenses
go unpaid. In early November, Davis sent a three am email to fifteen or twenty managers complaining about Twitter's rent obligations, which totaled one hundred and thirty million annually. And this email, Davis specifically compared Twitter's rent obligations to Spacexes, noting that Twitter had one tenth as many employees as SpaceX but paid five times as much rent annually. Of course, Twitter had significantly more employees when it first incurred its rent obligations.
Killian quickly became concerned that Musk intended to stop paying rent on Twitter's outstanding leases, breaching the com tracks and placing the company at risk of being evicted. Indeed, Musk's attorney, Alex Spiro gladly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter landlord Twitter's landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent since San Francisco was a shithole. Oh my god, is.
That the only thing you need to not pay rent?
Yeah?
This this city with a fraction of the violent crime, for example, many parts of Texas.
Yeah, it's I was just gonna say, because if that's the case, I think we could apply it to a lot of places.
Yeah, I yeah, I'm so. I'm so frustrated by this man and all of the people around him. Yeah, he incredibly hateable, old man or a piece of shit whatever. Musk even went so far as to prevent Twitter from paying the janitorial staff for the work they had already
provided after the janitors complained about being fired. In essence, it quickly became clear to Killian that Musk's intended method of operation was to obtain services from vendors without any intention of keeping the agreements or paying for services requested and received. In other words, robbing people like stealing from them, theft, the thing that he's complained about happening on the streets of San Francisco.
Yeah, well, it's okay if you wear a suit and do it.
Yeah, it's great if you wear a suit and do it.
Absolutely again, it's what kind of Yeah, I'm agreeing with you.
It's yeah, the I really like it.
I know I'm not wrong.
I feel like I feel like, if we're going to have these really fucked up standard ground laws, you know, where people can basically like commit murder if they feel like their car is going to get stolen or something, I feel like you should have the right to do that. If you're like a janitor working for Elon Musk, like you should you should be allowed to draw on him. Yeah, yeah,
I think that this is a self defense situation law. Yeah, yeah, I I whatever, I don't know, this is this is so disheartening.
Yeah, it's really it's like really really disgusting.
Yeah, and just uh, I guess I've seen some of the uh fail get lifted and sort of like people's like rose colored glasses on about him be taken off a bit. But it's just obvious the kind of person he is, and like how he doesn't really care about a lot of the stuff he says.
He cares about. It's just I don't know, it sucks.
Hate it, Yeah, it sucks. He just cares about being. Yeah, he's he's, he's he sees himself primarily as an entertainer because for some reason, like all of the worst people in America, his primary goal is to like be famous for making people like laugh or whatever. Like it's weird because like, stand up comedians are the most miserable people in the world, and also all of the worst richest people desperately wish they were a stand up comedian. Like
you saw it when fucking what's his name? Uh yeah, Dave Chappelle brought him out that like, oh, if you could only yeah, if you could only have an audience eating out of the palm of your hand, you would be happier than you've ever been in your life.
But like, it's the one thing you can't buy.
And we've talked about that on various shows that we've been on or have.
But you know, obviously this was not a cool kid. He was.
He's not a well liked person. The only cachet that he's ever had is his money. He's not even a smart innovative person. Every idea he's had is someone else's idea.
That he's tanking. I mean, are any of his businesses doing well?
Yeah, you've seen a lot also with like the Ai quote unquote boom, where it's so clear some of this is just like, oh, you just wish you were a little more creative.
Like, yeah, why they hate writers.
You hate exactly, you hate musicians, you hate creators because you don't you can't do it well or you're not praised enough for it or whatever, and so you have to have the machine do it.
I think what we actually need to solve most of our problems a basic income that ensures that like people could just like paint or make music or do comedy, uh and survive. And and here's the key part. Then we use AI to give the people who are worst at at a fan base so they feel like they're successful and they don't become yeah yeah, yeah fans. Yeah they'll they'll never meet them, they do the yeah exactly, and then we can we don't have a.
Daily Lives doesn't exist account where they make like oh, this is a fake person is made with a bunch of people an audience of them following and clapping and clicking the like button praising is bad pilot.
Now now I'm envisioning, like I know they're saying that.
What Now I'm envisioning like a Black Mirror episode where some journalist is like confused at how there's so many Ben Shapiro fans of his TV writing, or like how Elon Musk is such a successful stand up comedian and he like he cracks the case and then like the FBI has to come destroy him because you have like you don't know what we're keeping it like we have to let them think they're good.
Good, But I mean this scenario, look, was it a couple of days ago?
The godfather of AI comes out saying this could be.
Our lead the world and our annilation. No, I'm like, maybe this is our great positive reframe.
Yeah, but you know what's even better than AI providing a fan base for all of the your too right wing culture warriors who got into advocating genocide because nobody laughed at their jokes.
I don't want to know.
Yeah, oh well it's you. Oh, it's both of you.
Oh, thank you so much.
Which is our time to plug stuff?
Yeah?
I thought it was a time to do one one less Fleetwood mac reference.
Oh I mean we.
Could we still can? I did?
This has been a total has been one of my dreams.
Now, that was bad.
That was that was that was good. That was good. I'm proud of.
Being here to stay with you guys.
Oh, we have a show called some More News that Cody hosts on the YouTube channel and a podcast that Cody's going to tell you about now.
It's called some More News. Yeah, you can watch it on YouTube dot com. Slash the name of the show, probably and even more News is the name of the podcast version, which is more of a different kind of show. But it's the same people where podcasts are available.
Yeah. Yeah, so check them both out.
Check it out.
Google the names of our names and you'll find all the stuff that we do.
Google Google Katie Stole, Google Google Cody Johnston, or google them by their nicknames see Money and k Money, which is exclusively how I refer to them in private.
It's true.
It's true.
Time.
I don't really respond because I always forget, but yeah, that's how I type it out when I'm saying I just call you both, come money.
But they seem to know, Oh, I definitely that works, Come Money, Come honey.
I just have one last thing to say to you both, and it's that you make love and fun.
Ah, there we go, There we go. Yeah, come back for the next part of this series, when we'll be talking about another album. I don't know which other album. I don't know. How do you guys feel about the dire straits? I only know one song that they wrote.
I only know a couple songs limited.
I only know money for nothing, limited references available.
Well, well we'll work again. We just do rumors again.
There was the album and you know what's not an album but doesn't have ads? Our cooler Zone Media Apple premium subscription channel you can subscribe to.
Now Robert say something. Yeah, I am not secondhand news, but you know what's first hand news is if you get a subscription to cooler Zone Media on Apple's whatever their thing, then you don't get ads, and then the news isn't secondhand. It's just coming straight to you unfiltered. You know. H. Every time I accidentally say something offensive, we leave it in for you guys. That's right. It's a lot of piss. Yeah, that's that's my.
New piss out of a podcast.
U when we say it the way we do. Yeah, yeah, it's really not bones Yeah, uh definitely not. Okay, anyway, that's been an episode.
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.