Some time has passed since the bulk of the hoopla with Don Wands/Glow Industries — remember the weekend of questionable blog comments and unapologetic apology-laden emails from “Don” and “Chuck” at Don Wands? Since then, my opinion of Don Wands as a company has continued to fluctuate. Here’s why.
First, Monday (June 29th) rolled around. On this day, as I suspected, the rest of the office came back to work, and I began to hear from more voices at Don Wands and Glow Industries. The first was an email from Doogie, a sales representative at Glow Industries, which read, in part:
First off I would like to apologize for all the rude and disrespectful comments that were posted by Don . . . I assure you this is not how we treat our customers. I found his comments to be way out of line, and down right rude . . . In the 6 years I have been here I have never been this embarrassed by a coworker before . . . I’m very angry about his very bad judgment . . . I felt that you should get an official apology from a real rep from Glow Industries.
After that, Brian Nupp, Vice President of Sales at Glow Industries, sent me an email and posted the text of it as a comment. I highly suggest you read it. As it turns out, my suspicion about “Don” and “Chuck” being the same person (an email signed by “Chuck” read, “Could you please remove your story about my comments?”) was correct.
. . . I am VERY SORRY for statements made by Don/Chuck (Don is Chuck our Marketing Manager). I feel his initial statement was callous and completely inappropriate and does not represent Don Wands or our company as a whole. I am completely embarrassed . . .
Again, I am sincerely sorry for any comments made by Don/Chuck. I would like to officially say they do not represent Don Wands, Glow Industries, or Treeze. Appropriate action will be addressed with those who issued the comments. Please find it in your hearts to give us a second chance.
It became obvious that this was a case of a rogue employee, and I was feeling better about everything. Chuck was responsible for both the blog comments and emails, meaning that his attitude was his alone — not the company’s.
I continued to correspond with Brian, who informed me that the owner was dealing with Chuck. I asked if he would email those who received insubstantial “apology” emails from Chuck (from the info@donwands.com address), and he did so — both Miss KissThis and Amber received personalized apologies from Brian. Brian also informed me that someone else is now in charge of the info@donwands.com address. This was all reassuring.
July 1st, I emailed Brian asking what happened with Chuck. It was important to me, and to my readers, to know what happened to this employee. I wasn’t trying to dig or overstep my boundaries, but I needed to know. Brian did not seem to want to answer this question, and asked that I direct any other questions to Jason, the owner of Glow Industries. But when I asked specifically for an email address, he would only give me Jason’s phone number, stating that Jason’s email address was “unavailable.”
Well, I loathe talking to people on the phone. And besides, it’s not like I needed another apology or to engage in a conversation — I just wanted to know the answer to a very simple question: “what happened with Chuck?” My amiga Backseat Boohoo offered to call Jason, but of course he wasn’t there. She left a message, and has received no call back since.
Without the help of anyone at Glow Industries, I was able to obtain Jason’s email address elsewhere (it is definitely not “unavailable”). I emailed him. If the issue was that they didn’t want me publishing the text of his email, I wrote, then I wouldn’t (not that I was planning to in the first place). No reply. I emailed him again on July 5th, stating that my readers would very much appreciate knowing what happened with Chuck. No reply.
What is so hard about letting me know what happened with Chuck? It’s not like I expected them to fire him. I just wanted to know that he had at least been talked to about all of this. For reasons I cannot determine, the people at Don Wands/Glow Industries don’t want to divulge this information to me.1 My thoughts on their company went from “they’re fine, it was just a stupid employee” to “they don’t seem to care about being straightforward.”
So I can’t say I’m feeling particularly good about Don Wands, even now. I appreciate their apologies and I believe they are sincere, but this last bit of stubbornness bothers me. Apologies are great and all, but they mean a lot less if not bolstered by actions. Such as replying to my emails and actually trying to gain my (and my readers’) trust back.
- It is entirely possible that they cannot legally tell me, but if that’s the case, they could at least say that. [↩]
If you liked this, you might also enjoy these posts:
Like
July 8th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I still think they’re all the same people, and I will never buy a product from this dishonest company, ever.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:49 am
@jessie: Well, Doogie’s and Brian’s email addresses were specific, so I’m pretty sure they’re not the same as Chuck. Not sure if that makes anything better, though.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Disciplinary actions or simply conversations had with employees about their performance tend to be confidential for legal reasons. I suspect that Brian directed you to Jason because he was not authorized to divulge this kind of information to anyone. Jason, if he is smart, would consult an attorney before answering any correspondence from anyone regarding confidential employee information. They told you the owner was dealing with “Chuck” and I would be surprised if you get any more information than that. They could potentially expose themselves to liability if they gave you more.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
@Laurel: You are correct, and I added a footnote to this post to address that. I wasn’t aware of all of that legal stuff until now. Nonetheless, it would be great if Jason would at least respond to my emails and explain exactly what you just said.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Argh. The whole thing is a confusing mess. Part of me thinks that maybe they were worried you were out to stir up trouble by asking about Chuck/Don and so they understandably avoided you, and another part of me says that if you call, they should be available, and if you leave a message, they better get back to you. Being unreachable isn’t cool.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Maybe it’s not that his email was unavailable, but that HE is unavailable by email? Some people get so much email they can’t possibly get through it in a timely manner, or suck at technology and must be reached by phone. Honestly I think if you’re unwilling to try calling the guy, you give up your right to complain about him being unreachable.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Well, I am glad to see the apology. Honestly, I’m not overly surprised you didn’t get any more information regarding this employee. In your shoes, I’d be happy enough with an apology.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Sounds like they did the right thing and you got apologies from the right people.
I don’t think they can tell us about employee operations and honestly, I don’t think I’d want to know. Seeing that they can tell what was said was poor judgment is enough for me to think they will take steps that are appropriate and necessary within the company.
I am glad that some of the higher-ups contacted you because I really want to like the company.
August 1st, 2009 at 6:03 am
I wouldn’t have expected them to respond to your request and here’s why:
1) As others have said, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal for them to divulge that information. I would expect they’d be especially leery of doing so if they had reason to suspect that you would make the information public on your blog, which they did.
2) Brian directed you to Jason, and asked you to *call* him, which you didn’t do. You had someone else call FOR you, and he happened to not be there at that moment, you didn’t try to call back. Instead, you dug around and found his email, then emailed him (which you’d basically been told not to do.)
3) Whether or not it’s important for you to know (and I’ll admit, I’m curious myself) what happen to Chuck, it’s really not any of your business, or ours. I have no doubt that it’s been handled.
If I were Brian or anyone from Don Wands, I wouldn’t have given you the information, either. Especially since you seem to have the intent of publishing said info if it were given, and it’s simply not public information. I would say that, in ignoring you, the company is trying to avoid an even bigger public firestorm, and I can’t blame them.
If you yourself had called Jason as you’d been told to do by Brian, you may well have received a response. It’s entirely possible that Jason does indeed get so many emails a day that there’s no way he can get to them all. Especially as he works for a rather large and very well known company, and his email address is, apparently, publicly available. He may not have even read your emails yet- I’m sure he probably gets hundreds per day.