The Shocking TRUTH About Lisa Frank's Workplace! | Dark History: CLIP

so we've got Lisa Frank Incorporated home of the unicorns and sparkly Dolphins Lisa herself has stepped away to be with her kids leaving her husband James in charge of the company James is I think it's safe to say struggling yeah his bad behavior is starting to have a huge effect on the company but he's not alone he's got himself a partner in crime helping him do all the dirty work this is where we welcome to the stage Ronda Rolette I looked her up on Facebook she looks like a Rhonda hey girl now Rhonda she started at the company way back in 1984 as Lisa's assistant she was there for quite some time to say the least and shortly after James took over a CEO an interesting promotion happens Miss Rhonda is bumped up to vice president at Lisa Frank Incorporated Rhonda must have had a very impressive resume because she also over sees HR legal and Licensing oh yeah she was in charge of a lot of big [ __ ] that maybe she shouldn't be in charge of she must have been an incredible worker just a little observation but if your company is killing it has hundreds of employees why would any business hire one person to handle three different departments I roll make it make sense it doesn't but okay h mhm anyway pretty soon co-workers are starting to notice that Ronda and James they seem very close and an employee even saw them at the mall together on a holiday weekend you know hanging out spending the holiday weekend at the mall with your boss which doesn't sound that bad but they're both married and then rumors just start flying around the office that Rhonda and James they're slapping Meats Rhonda was the one who had James's back in the office she was was there at every turn very loyal to this man she interrogated people on his behalf and when James didn't want to confront someone he send Rhonda she did again lots of his dirty work just firing people intimidation you name it Rhonda was on it when employees would come to Rhonda for help or questions or maybe to report something to HR cuz you know they're being mistreated Rhonda would simply tell them to just get over it Rhonda she was really good at keeping the employees in check I guess everyone was like really afraid of her just get over it oh that's all I have to do just get over it oh [ __ ] I'm cured thanks Rhonda the worst part of all was that she was head of HR and if you had a problem at Lisa Frank Incorporated sorry that was on you the company even put out an employee newsletter a couple times a year with words of motivation and encouragement for their employees there was like one month um I saw this picture online in the newsletter there was this cute little column full of instructions on how to be a good employee it basically said like employees need to always be thinking about how to please their boss your boss can make or break your career and if you have a bad relationship with your boss well that's your fault you're not being loyal enough sweetie just try harder that's what it said in this pamphlet like again oh that's it okay great oh and then we haven't even gotone to the cocaine I mean we weren't there so we don't really know for sure but previous employees would later say that Ronda and James were quote pretty big into Coke end quote which may explain the paranoia chair throwing the Tantrums can you imagine remember this is all happening in this really cute office with like rainbows and like glitter everywhere and he's over here James he's trying to act like Scarface but in Candy Land Ronda and James were pulling [ __ ] like withholding paychecks cutting commission rates messing up people's 401K rude and even told an employee they couldn't take work off to go to a family funeral now if you thought that was bad get this one day an employee left the office 10 minutes early and when James found out this happened oh [ __ ] he was livid he was raging there were even rumors that he instructed his managers to chain the doors shut so people could not leave could you imagine if your job did that it kind of reminded me of the Triangle shirt waist uh factory fire do you remember we did an episode on that they like chained the doors they kept the employees in cuz they didn't want them stealing yeah he's lucky it didn't end the same way that was actually an awful story but moving on so all of this is happening and the company's reputation was just in the toilet nobody had anything good to say about the Lisa Frank company at least working for it so of course James wouldn't take any responsibility for the decline of Happiness within the workplace instead he just avoided blaming himself at all costs he was Notorious for pushing meetings with the art department and then blaming them when artwork didn't arrive on time oh yeah he would delay approving products and then make excuses to the buyers and it turns out that James wasn't just bad to work for he was just toxic to work with I mean I guess he's consistent I'm always trying to find a bright side things you know I also don't think the cocaine alleged cocaine helped him at all but I'm sure he was having a fun time so the company internally was suffering from all the chaos the turnover rate was crazy high the entire staff basically quit and had to be replaced once a year people were dropping like flies and folks were talking anywhere you went in Tucson word on the street was like girl you do not want to work at Lisa Frank they chain the doors and throw chairs at you you know so nobody wants to work there unless you're like desperate despite James's best efforts to just destroy everything people are still buying the products I mean sales are still very strong and in fact the company's approach to make a Lisa Frank television show which like makes sense cuz they're on top of the world and each of the like those colorful animal characters were going to like have their own names and Back stories it could have been the next Care Bears it could have been great so what happened James happened of course you know this for some reason James and Ronda fired the entertainment lawyer that Lisa brought on to help negotiate a potentially huge Hollywood movie and TV deal because they were like well we don't need help we could just do it ourselves spoiler alert they couldn't the whole thing fell through and the project ended up dying RIP by 2004 important buyers like yaret are starting to refuse to do business with the company because James is difficult to work with you know he got that title difficult to work with which you don't want that because then nobody works with you so at this point the company has low morale High turnover rates and is losing out on what seems like no brainer business deals it's unfortunate that we ended up with so many Troll movies but like no Lisa Frank show H we were Raw sted now rumors that the CEO was sleeping with the VP and doing blow in the office were circling round and round honestly sounds like a party but it gets back to Lisa she gets wind of it and maybe starts to catch on to the whole Ronda and James situation if there is one allegedly we don't really know for sure but at the very least she starts to realize it's time to take back her company and clean up the freaking mess that James made Lisa decides to return fulltime with the goal of bringing the company back to its Glory Days but when she comes back it was a very different place than when she left it one employee said that the original work environment at Lisa Frank used to be vibrant and full of energy but now it had turned into a place of quote intimidation and insecurity end quote when Lisa returned James and Ronda made it clear to the employees you're either team James or team Lisa pick aide [ __ ] yeah and this was serious okay they being James and Ronda they were going as far as bugging phones and reading employee emails to find out which team these employees were on and if they found out you were on team Lisa chairs coming out your head you better watch out you better duck you know what I'm saying for example I guess the sales department was labeled team Lisa and communication from James and Ronda basically stopped and the sales team they were suddenly only allowed in certain parts of the building jeez anytime someone from sales needed something for their job from Team James they would be shut down and told oh why don't you go ask Lisa it's just so childish awful and a ton of the sales team of course they're going to quit because they felt like they can't even do their jobs what was the point plus everyone's being mean to them like what is this it just seems weird that James would St sabotage the sales department aka the department that's making the company money because you know like it seems like he likes money so I don't know why he would do that but okay so when Lisa came back to the office she wasn't just trying to bring her company back she was trying to take her life back in 2005 Lisa filed for divorce from James telling her close friends that she could no longer put put up with his emotional abuse I mean obviously none of us know what happens behind closed doors but if James treated the employees like [ __ ] I can't imagine what he said to his own family I mean she's divorcing him so maybe I can kind of guess when Lisa presents a divorce obviously James pissed and it wasn't because he was about to lose his wife and family n n he was panicking because he was about to lose the thing that he seemed to love the most cocaine no I'm just kidding money [Music] C