This is not what sorry looks like

By Johnathan Nightingale

[Content Warning: sexual harassment at work]

Two weeks ago, on Friday Sept 27, a woman wrote about her experience being sexually harassed at work. She worked for a company here in Toronto named Planswell, and she wrote it anonymously, as Jane Doe.

Medium took down her post. More about that later. And Planswell’s CEO, Eric Arnold, issued a statement. That’s what’s been visible to date.

What isn’t visible is what happened behind the scenes that Friday. And I think it’s important to talk about that because what happened behind the scenes is what often happens, and it fucking sucks.

I’m mindful that this post is about people of privilege and power around Jane. I’m going to try to thread the needle on talking about those people without taking the focus off of Jane, because her needs are paramount here. I’m writing this after she said she’d like me to, and she’s reviewed this post before publishing.

Believe survivors

Melissa and I first noticed Jane’s post when she showed up in Melissa’s twitter follows. We read it, and signal boosted, and asked Jane if there was anything we could do to help. Right now there are a bunch of executives watching Planswell, and worried they might be next. If you are one of them, and this got forwarded quietly to you, this is the first thing I want to say: believe survivors. It matters.

Less than an hour later, Planswell tweeted something about a Timmy award nomination. The apparently-oblivious timing was surprising and I said so.

After that a few things happened pretty quickly. Planswell deleted the tweet. Someone reported Jane Doe’s post and Medium took it down. (Jane’s twitter account links to a PDF version.)

And then Eric, their CEO, called our office to talk to me.

Come get your people

As a straight white man in tech, my assumption is that I’m ignorant about a lot things. If you’re a straight white man in tech, I really recommend it as a default stance. So much of the shit that happens in our industry, in work in general, in life in general, is stuff that happens to other people. It’s not hidden, but we are given a lot of permission to ignore it.

And when we do decide to pay attention to it, the first thing we expect is for other people to explain it to us. We ask for help, without any sense of irony for how many requests for help we have straight-up ignored. We ask for a free Diversity 101 education. From people who are very tired of giving out free Diversity 101 educations.

The people who taught me how to think about this are very tired. And one of the things they point to as valuable work allies can do is to take over the 101 shit. To answer those questions so that marginalized folks doing the hard work don’t have to. The shorthand that we use for this is, “come get your people.”

So when Eric, immediately after calling, tried to connect on LinkedIn, I accepted the request.

Talking about talking

Medium pulled down Jane’s post. As best as we can tell, they pulled it because she included a copy of private conversations, which is against their rules. I understand the spirit of that rule but it seems perverse to apply it against a survivor taking the brave step of telling her story.

I’m going to talk about the conversation that Eric and I had. But I’d like very much for Medium not to take down this post, too. So I’m only going to quote what I said. I feel like I have a right to that. I hope the Medium mods will agree.

What I want to do is show what the conversations can look like behind the scenes, where marginalized folks aren’t invited. To be what Anand calls a “traitor to my class.” And to compare that against the public story.

Advice given

He opened by saying that he’d tried to call, and could use some advice. Remember that this was moments after I’d tweeted at Planswell asking where their response was. In an attempt at doing the 101 work, I said, in part:

If it’s about the Jane Doe post, I’m particularly ill-equipped since I don’t know the details as you/planswell see them. But my put would be, whether your position is that it’s all fabrication, all true, or a mix, you are going to want to have said something. And in any case other than “this is 100% false,” my advice would be to be direct and complete in your apology on the subject. … If there’s any truth to it, my advice is to put 100% of your energy into “it doesn’t matter if we disagree about some of the particulars, the core here is true and we are ashamed of it.” Assuming that that’s how you feel. I also wouldn’t put things in to your reply that you don’t believe, it will show. Ijeoma Oluo wrote a good article about this a while ago that I would have your team read, whoever’s helping right now. https://time.com/4245347/apologizing-like-a-grownup/

He thanked me. He talked about how tricky it is to balance so many stakeholders, and also to preserve anonymity. He told me how proud he was of the team, and how they handled things.

So I tried again:

… I wouldn’t acknowledge the suffering and stress of one of your former employees by talking about how proud you are of the team. The tricky-ness that you’re feeling comes from trying to consider several different stakeholders at once — I get that, and it’s something we do as leaders all the time. But if you stop for a second. If you just stop, and park the defense/response instincts and just think about it.

… I can’t speak for her, but I can have empathy for waking up every morning dreading a thing. And feeling ashamed for the decisions you made. If you can get into a place where you’re just full up on empathy for this woman, then the post is straightforward because none of the other stakeholders rank compared to that feeling. You can keep her anonymous, validate that what she said happened, show your work on improvements you’re making, but also acknowledge your role. This will not work as an “X but Y” post where you acknowledge the thing but then bridge to key, positive-looking messages. This is only an “X” post. We fucked up. We acknowledge it. We’re undertaking the work to be better but we recognize that forgiveness isn’t part of the deal and we can’t demand it. We’re just disgusted and recognize that no one else is to blame for that than us. All the stuff Ijeoma writes.

Anyway — I’m back in meetings. This is bad news, man. I’m replying here because I need there to be room for people to grow and learn and be better, but I’ll be honest that my default stance is to believe her, and to be really worried that you’ll be another white male CEO making a half-apology and waiting for the world to move on.

Look maybe you like my advice and maybe you don’t. I’m not a journalist and I’m not a Planswell employee and I don’t claim to know what happened. I’ll tell you that, re-reading it, the thing I don’t like is how gentle my tone is. It isn’t how I felt in the moment. I didn’t feel gentle. But I also wanted what I was saying to connect. He called it helpful. And for a few hours that was that.

Advice not taken

While he was asking me for advice, it seems he was asking everyone else, too. And then, around the end of the day on Friday, Planswell posted this. The fact that their first statement was in reply to me, instead of any of Jane’s posts is galling. But worse is the content itself.

And that evening, I heard from Eric again. Asking if I had any thoughts on the response. I said, in part:

Mostly, I think it’s not up to me. If you’re asking, as an outside observer, how I read it? I’d say it’s not great, honestly. It omits a lot (she made several specific claims about things you said or did that you don’t rebut, but also don’t acknowledge). It focuses more on you and the team than it does on her. … Crucially (for me, again, not the person whose opinion matters here), it doesn’t name a single thing you did or failed to do that you are apologizing for. I’m glad you said you believe her. That’s important and a good thing to lead with. As for the rest, I’ve gotta put my kid to bed, so take it for what it’s worth. I don’t know what she’ll do with it, but I’d focus my attention there, if I were you.

I won’t paste his reply. Partly because I don’t want it used to pull this post down. And partly because it was fucking gross. He changed gears, and wanted to tell me that Jane’s post was full of untruths and misrepresentations. The post that, hours earlier, he’d referred to with “I believe her, too.” I told him that I was done helping.

A few hours later, BetaKit posted a story about it, where Eric talks about how proud he is of the team.

So what?

The central party here is Jane. Jane is the one who gets to call the shots on what is or is not an acceptable response to the events she describes. So why are we 1700 words into Johnathan talking about Eric?

It’s a fair question, and the only answer I have is: accountability. There’s a game playing out here that plays out over and over again and I want to burn it down. It goes like this:

• Something shitty happens to someone in a company
• The CEO fails to address it in a responsible, informed, survivor-centric way
• That failure becomes public
• The CEO publicly flails and does a shitty job of apologizing, sometimes repeatedly, sometimes doing new damage in the process
• The CEO privately gathers up the people in privileged positions to be on his side. He counts on everyone, even strangers, to keep all of the machinations quiet. We are all asked not to indulge in “cancel culture” against the poor CEO, whose intentions were good and was trying to be a friend, but just got in over his head and didn’t know what to do.

No. No. Look at the anatomy of that back and forth. This isn’t a CEO lost in the wilderness. This is a CEO getting free coaching on how to write an apology that would mean something, maybe from several people at once, and ignoring it. Why was he reaching out to so many people for advice (I know of at least 4) when his statement shows no signs of taking any of it? It sure smells like co-opting and suppressing criticism to me. I mean, doesn’t it? If so, that’s not a naive play. That’s someone working at it.

This is not what sorry looks like

I don’t know who got Jane’s post taken down but, whoever it was, that’s not what sorry looks like.

Suppressing criticism is not what sorry looks like.

Talking about how proud you are of your team is not what sorry looks like.

Back channeling, to a stranger you asked for advice, about how a survivor’s post is full of untruths and misrepresentations is not what sorry looks like. It’s not what good intentions look like. It’s not what “I believe you” looks like.

What now?

I said this was a post about accountability. But I can’t do accountability here. Outside of half an hour of conversation, Eric has no accountability to me. Planswell has no accountability to me.

What I want to know is: who is Eric accountable to, and what do they think about this?

• He’s accountable, first, to Jane Doe. She hasn’t posted anything in response to his statement yet. But I hope that, if you’re reading this, you’re following her, too. We should all be working to amplify whatever accountability she needs.
• He’s also accountable to his employees. I’m sure they’re all figuring out where they stand on this.
• He’s accountable to their corporate partners. I don’t know who underwrites Planswell’s mortgage or insurance products. But I sure would love to know what they think about the last two weeks.
• They also announced — just this week!— a partnership with Rise People, an HR company of all things. I’m very curious about how that organization reconciles this partnership with their own values.

I don’t honestly know how to end this except to say that I’m so disappointed about all of this. I know that’s unproductive. I’ll still try to come get my people when asked. But at the end of 2019 I’m all out of patience for CEOs who wring their hands about how hard it is to figure this shit out. As Anilsays, the price of relevance is fluency. If you’re a CEO who’s worried they’ll be next, if you’re an investor worried this is happening in your portfolio: get moving right now. The icon for Jane Doe’s twitter account says, “Time’s Up.”

Postscript: On November 6, Jane Doe identified herself. I’ve left the references to Jane Doe intact in this post for historical continuity, but part of supporting Davinia is calling her by her name now that she’s made it clear that’s what she wants. When referencing this post, please bear it in mind.