Trigger Warning: Please do not continue reading this if you are subject to sensitive triggers.
Disclaimer: Some of my words may come out “rough” at certain. There are things I find difficult to say. I also want to acknowledge that I am not perfect, and I can understand why it may have been difficult for Frazil to listen to me. But I feel like they didn’t even try.
About two years ago, the CFO of Freezing Point Kyle Lemmon and CEO Kyle Freebairn were commanding Frazil’s all-inclusive company meetings, where everyone from the lowest level employee to the CEO were present – no matter what part of the company they worked for. This is one of the ways upper management tried to make everyone feel like they were being included.
CFO Kyle Lemmon took the mic, and in front of us he announced a new initiative – Freezing Point would support the fight against Human Trafficking by donating a percentage (1% if I recall correctly) of the company’s profits to a certain anti-trafficking organization. Most of the crowd absorbed the information, supporting the action. After all, who wouldn’t want to help stop trafficking?
That wasn’t my reaction. Mine reaction was that of fear. I instantly descended into panic attacks and flashbacks, I froze in my chair.
Fast forward to May of 2023. At this time, CFO Kyle Lemmon doesn’t know what to do with me. On the one hand, my productivity and metrics are unrivaled and on the phone I’m good with customers. I pick up on things others miss, but that brings up the other hand: my communication skills go out the door once I’m off the phone. This might seem a bit ironic, when you realize that I review consumer electronics on the side – at least until you realize why I started engaging with the high tech world and why I can speak more clearly in reviews and on the phone.
In this interview with the CFO of Freezing Point aka Frazil, I’m barely able to utter sentences of a few words and start stuttering and freezing when I try to speak to him despite being there for my 5th (?) interview with him after having been with the company for two years and act reclusive.
I would imagine that in his eyes, he felt that he had gone above and beyond to try to make me feel welcome. He asks if I am happy, I stutter out an answer something like “I’m content to be where I am”. This frustrates him to no end, and in a moment of anger he both tells me he is giving me a small raise and accuses me of faking my symptoms and tells me to stop “hiding behind crutches”.
I look at him, inside I’m screaming about what happened to her. I’m screaming about what happened to me. I’m screaming about how I screamed about it when it happened, and what happened afterwards each time I attempted to make noise. But alas, no words come out as I am frozen in fear. I mumble out a humble acknowledgement of some sort, and leave the office in frustration.
For the next six months, I spend an hour or more attempting to circumvent my flashbacks and panic attacks by writing down what happened. But every time, it comes out a mess. My hands shake just starting to think the words, let alone put them to paper. I try to write down everything that happened, but the terror of reliving those experiences defeats me – and I’m not always able to remember details. Some things I can remember one day, but not the next. I try to write certain details, but they don’t come out right. I get close, but never close enough. I end up throwing away the papers after failing time and time again. At the end of November 2023 I start having doubts as if I will ever be able to speak these words, and in December I stop trying. I accept that I will be a shattered person for the rest of my life. I gave up, in every sense of the word. No longer would I try to be human, I had accepted my broken fate. If Freezing Point’s management didn’t recognize that shift in demeanor in my monthly feedback report, they are idiots.
The following month, in January, I attend CES 2024 under my pen name and alter ego of Albert Thomas.
For the most part, I was doing well and able to speak mostly clearly and able to communicate my thoughts well. I had one relatively (to me) small panic attack, but the folks at Intel were understanding.
At CES 2024, I tried to push my comfort level and expand my engagement. Instead of meeting only with vendors of storage products, cooling solutions, and keyboards I also accepted invitations from the CES-spam of companies whose products were related to things similar to my strengths – I accepted invitations related to laptops for example. I also accepted invitations to things that merely interested me, even if it were a topic I wouldn’t be able to cover – like all of those seemingly Star Trek-level “AI” based translator headset pairs that let you talk with anyone in their native language! Things like AirJets also captured my interest, with a small potential to revolutionize “air” cooling as we know it!
It was the result of meeting with one of these companies whose products I wouldn’t normally cover that I found out that Frazil’s commitment to fighting human trafficking were empty words with no substance behind them.
I met with the representative of a foreign company in their national section of CES. The lady who met with me was the only person who spoke English. She seemed eager to answer my questions, maybe too eager. Something seemed off. The body language and tone of voice of her superiors when speaking to her, and her to them, didn’t seem quite right.
I could be very much wrong here, because January is the anniversary of the most traumatic event of my life. But I suspected she was not working for this employer of her own free will. I wish I could speak the words to explain all of the different red flags which are why I suspect that she was not working of her own consent, but I cannot. The mere act of thinking of these things causes terror in my mind on a level which you will not be able to understand.
When I returned from CES, I drove to the office for work on Monday despite my “office day” being Wednesdays. My mind was filled with terror and flashbacks, and I needed to feel less unsafe. How am I supposed to be able to report this, when I can’t report this without being able to explain why I suspect that the representative was not quite free? How can I explain that, when the very thought of my own traumas and the traumas of <censored> causes causes a series of flashbacks and panic attempts which in turn causes my body and my ability to communicate to freeze and dissociate in a way that few normal people can even begin to understand!?!?
That Monday, I swear I tried to raise the issue with management like a “normal” human being. I couldn’t. I froze before I was able to open my mouth. My brain screamed the words, but I couldn’t move the air to say them through my mouth. I would walk to their doors, and then be unable to move any futher. I imagine this is what it feels like to try and scream in the dead of outer space.
One of my coworkers – let’s call them “T-Pain” – realized something was wrong to me. I replied to them, “T-Pain, I think someone I spoke to at CES was victim of at least one type of trafficking.” It caught them off guard. They didn’t know what to say. But they acknowledged what I felt.
That’s more than can be said of the four members of Frazil’s senior management that I communicated to about this issue. At first, due to the panic attacks and flashbacks I sent an email to the CFO – as I thought, with his commitment to fighting trafficking he would be sure to understand! Boy was I wrong – he ignored my communication attempt entirely. After he ignored my email, I went down the chain of command with the same message (almost word for word), telling them a small portion of the details of what I went through. Telling them that I have been trying to make a report about the possibility of another trafficking victim, but that every time I attempt to do so that my body would shut down with panic attacks and flashbacks. I did this both electronically, via email and Teams, and in person.
Frazil’s management didn’t care that PTSD was breaking me apart because I was trying to make that report. I suspect they dismissed me as crazy. To quote my most senior manager at the time : “What, do you want a hug?” At least one of the lower managers tried to pretend to care and said “trafficking is evil.”
They then transferred my immediate manager to another department and replaced him with an asshole manager who I suspect was instructed by my most senior manager, Director of Operations Justin Allred, to make my life miserable to the point I would have to quit. I also tried telling her the same things I told the other managers, but she like the others mostly ignored my cries for help.
She made my life difficult by micromanaging, giving me instructions that were contradictory and difficult or impossible to follow, and basically ignoring every word that ever came out of my mouth. She also frequently would edit or delete her chat logs after I would question her about some of these things for clarification, to make it look like she had said something else. But at other times, she seemed like she was trying to be nice. At first, this confused me – but I now suspect that she was bound by the orders of the her direct boss, the COO.
Eventually, Frazil’s COO tried to force me to resign (multiple times) when I complained about how the new manager was mistreating me – but I did not allow them this easy victory and they were forced to fire me instead when I refused to quit.
Since that time I’ve moved far away, and I’ve been doing what I can to try to heal but at this point I’m not sure that’s possible. That’s one of the reasons I’m posting this now – I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep up the fight. I’m not giving up, but the odds of success seem more impossible every day.