A Florida company is under fire after the CEO of the business conducted a call with employees where she told them to pack up their pets and their children and bring them into the office in the middle of Hurricane Ian, promising to make the process of riding out the catastrophic storm “super fun for the kids!”
Vice News was the first to break the news on the CEO of Postcardmania — a Clearwater, Florida-based company that markets postcards — who openly downplayed the severity and dangerousness of the Category 4 hurricane in a conversation with her employees. The Postcardmania CEO, Joy Gendusa, stopped short of blatantly demanding that her employees show up at the office in the midst of the storm, but she did heavily trivialize and belittle the impending danger of the hurricane, referring to it multiple times as a likely “nothing burger,” almost undoubtedly putting her employees in a position where they felt as though they couldn’t express their fears and concerns without being mocked by their boss. The FL city where to postcard marketing company is based declared a state of emergency yesterday in connection to Hurricane Ian and sits within a county that has already begun evacuation measures.
Labor Notes’ Jonah Furman obtained and released internal communications from Gendusa that included the staff Zoom call, as well as text messages that stopped just short of demanding that employees come in:
Wild: Here are the CEO’s remarks on an staff call sent out with minutes from the meeting:
“Anyway, bring your pets, bring your kids… Jason can start blowing up those air mattresses… Raise your hand if you’re scared of the hurricane. It’s really not going to be that scary.” https://t.co/EAKHUFcuf5 pic.twitter.com/bnDIKJPO66
— Jonah Furman (@JonahFurman) September 27, 2022
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Employees at marketing firm @postcardmania in Clearwater, Florida are not only being asked to work through the hurricane, but are being told to *bring their kids and pets to stay at work overnight* so as to “continue to service our National clients.” pic.twitter.com/I9sV1gjDmA
— Jonah Furman (@JonahFurman) September 27, 2022
VICE News ultimately contacted the postcard company’s public relations officials, who claimed that their offices were closed on Wednesday and Thursday. The PR rep. told the publication, “We have some employees voluntarily working remote who are safely located in non-evacuation zones. Our building is open as a shelter during the hurricane for staff, friends, children, and pets. We did this during Irma as well.”
However, PR’s claims clearly don’t add up with the CEO’s statements to her employees, saying she wanted to “continue to deliver,” that she wanted to “continue to service our national clients” and that “we are not closing, we are working.”
Those inconsistencies were reportedly addressed Tuesday afternoon, in a follow-up message sent to employees by the company saying they would close on Wednesday and Thursday with the hope that they would “reopen our offices on Friday.”
One Postcardmania employee spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity due to their fear of retribution from the company and said that employees were under the impression that they would have to work through the hurricane, whether they showed up to the office in person or not, and that messaging from the company did not shift “until that post went viral.”
Employees also told the publication that they were still expected to meet their 40 hours this week, despite closures from the hurricane, by working through the weekend beginning on Friday.
Read the full report from VICE News here.
Featured image via screen capture
