Podcast Transcript

---Transcript for Attend to Everything, Season 1, Episode 1--- 

*Intro Music, instrumental loop from Nothing From Nothing by Billy Preston*

Siobhan Lamenski (Host): Hello and welcome. This is Attend to Everything, the limited-series podcast in which we will investigate allegations of theft and corruption at the origins of one of the most consequential business enterprises to have emerged since the turn of the century: Hard Knox Labor Futures. 

Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor. This programming, with the many hours of research and production that go into it, would never get produced were it not for the Real Eyes Discovery Grant established by the education firm Young Minds Incorporated. YMI's mission is to use cutting-edge cognitive science to find and illuminate the many ways learning can become doing. For more information on how the diverse thinkers at YMI can contribute to your future or the future of your company, visit YMI online or at any one of their 384 training facilities around the globe.     

Now, onto episode one of Attend to Everything. This episode, Who's In Attendance?

*Seg Music, opening of GO! by Common*

Hard Knox Labor Futures, or HK Labor, is widely regarded as the brainchild of Heather Knox. Through its unorthodox approach to the hiring and paying of employees, HK Labor has revolutionized human resources and created quite a stir in the investing world. In 2010, the Nobel prize-winning economist Dr. Robert Lucas Jr. said of Heather Knox, "This very impressive young woman has made plain to the world that the power, and perhaps more importantly, the dynamism of human capital cannot be underestimated. Her innovations have already reshaped our understanding of the economic forces behind growth and productivity."  

The company has inspired business, political, and labor leaders around the world, all of whom have publicly praised Heather Knox and the work she does. 

In February of this year, however, allegations were made, allegations that there is something rotten at the foundation of HK Labor. Some have begun to question how much credit Heather Knox deserves for the success she enjoys. 

This controversy started when Becca Caldwell-Knox published her first post on the popular Usenet forum biz.SelfMade. Becca knows the Knox family very well; she is the ex-wife of Heather's brother Daren. In her February post, Becca asserted that HK Labor would never have come into being without the contributions and sacrifices made by a struggling Avant-Garde theater troupe called The Tarnished Happy Fun Hall Players.

I first learned of Becca's allegations this past summer while working on what I believed was an entirely unrelated story. I was investigating the national spike in incidents of harassment targeting prominent women of color. I was assigned the story by DFW Information Services; they wanted to know if the harassment cases were connected in any way. Well, the story took weeks, but in time, we found that nearly all of the incidents could be tied back to the online hate community Well, Well, Well, My Michelle. After publication, we saw twelve arrests, new regulations for Usenet moderation, and an awareness-raising music festival featuring a Guns and Roses reunion concert dubbed the Bad Obsessions Review. 

I should have been proud of that work. I should have been satisfied to see the impact a solid piece of journalism had on the world. But I couldn't get there. Something didn't fit.

Of the thirty-seven cases of harassment I looked into, thirty-five were linked to Well, Well, Well. The perpetrators were all similar in background and beliefs. They all followed a similar playbook of dumping, doxxing, and ditching. The thirty-sixth case was different, but it was easy enough to explain away. The perpetrator was a jilted lover with a lot of time on his hands. 

It was the harassment of Heather Knox, however, that I couldn't stop thinking about, even at this year's ceremony announcing the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative journalism. Here's a clip from my acceptance speech.

Recording of Siobhan Lamenski: There are people committed to fostering hate. We can - no, we must find those people and expose them for the world to see. Because to reject hatred, we first must call it out. Thank you to the committee for recognizing this important truth. But that alone will not be enough to protect our society from the poison of intolerance. A new information ecosystem has inadvertently created spaces where bitterness can pool and simmer. People who are typically good-hearted, people not seeking out hatred, they stumble into these pools and become mired in hatred. We don't know why people gather 'round to obsess, to target, or to lash out. But they do, and as journalists, we owe it to ourselves to better understand this darker side of the information revolution. Our work is not done [long applause]. 

Siobhan: Success and recognition were not enough for me. I was hung up on this last case, on the case of Heather Knox. It just didn't make sense. Her harassers had different levels of education. They came from different cultures. Ages ranged from twenty-three to fifty-two. Their professional backgrounds were varied. There were four women in the group and seven men. They only had one thing in common; they were all failed or failing entrepreneurs. And for reasons I had yet to divine, these people began targeting Heather Knox with what can only be described as pranks. Some were harmless, her car covered in those elastic sticky hands you'd find in the goody bags at a child's birthday party. Some were merely inconvenient for Knox; for an entire month, she was visited daily by a series of singing telegrams. But several of the pranks were potentially dangerous. And then in May, what appeared to be a children's toy - just a ball really - flew through a windowpane and into the Knox home. That day, a line was crossed. The molded plastic ball cracked open, exposing a liquid core that filled the room with poisonous fumes. Knox was hospitalized. The injuries to her throat will take months to heal, leaving her voice changed and her sense of personal safety shattered.  

To understand the events that led up to that day, perhaps it's best to get to know Heather Knox a little better.

*Seg music, intro from Stereo by Pavement*

Siobhan: Heather Knox is a Chicago-based entrepreneur who rose to local prominence in the 2000s in what I will call... a most unexpected way. In 2005, Knox founded a small business providing a service to retail businesses in her North Lawndale neighborhood. Bathroom attendants. For a reasonable fee, restaurants and stores could have a bathroom attendant on duty at certain times of the day. No one, including Knox herself, expected the success that would follow. Over the next two years, the enterprise, which Heather had named Requesting Your Attendants, grew at a stunning pace. Employees from Requesting Your Attendants could be found throughout the Chicagoland area. They earned themselves the moniker Rye Guys, both men and women attendants alike. Some say that name was the result of a hasty acronym; others suggest the ubiquity of the service in Wicker Park cocktail bars during a resurgence in the popularity of whiskey drinks, or perhaps it was something else. Shane Handle, a former manager at the Violet Hour reflected on that question.

Recording of Handle: No, I'm not sure if you can pin that nickname down so easy. Sure, the acronym is there and we were serving old fashions like it was nobody's business, but it wasn't just that. They were funny. It was funny. The whole thing seemed kinda funny. Like we were being post-post-ironic. Because we knew how these people were getting paid. No tips. The Rye Guys would refuse even an aggressive attempt to tip. That was the most common complaint I got about Rye Guys at first, "Why won't you let 'em take any tips? It seems wrong." But it wasn't me, you know? I didn't make that policy. These bathroom attendants were bringing home more than thirty-five hundred dollars a month, and word got out, and everybody knew, and we all kinda liked it. They'd done this thing. They found a way to pay bathroom attendants enough to live in this city, like kinda well, you know? Yeah, it was funny. Like we were all kinda laughing at these customers who were thinking, "Ah, this poor sap working the bathroom must be miserable." But they weren't, and they made the place feel more upscale. They made the place safer. They kept the place cleaner. And the customers were so happy, and we were all smirking the whole time. So, yeah, Rye Guys? I think there's more than one way to spell that.  

Siobhan: That was Shane Handle reflecting on the rise of Requesting Your Addandants in late 2007. His focus on the way Rye Guys were compensated is an important part of the Heather Knox story.  

Recording from a 2006 episode of Tucker: On tonight's curious situation, there's an entrepreneur making waves in Chicago where she's offering to pay bathroom attendants over $3,000 a month. You heard that right. And what's more, she guarantees that salary for at least two years. This might sound curious to some viewers, but sure enough, there's a woman in Chicago who thinks cleaning a bathroom should earn you a life of luxury. Stay tuned.

Siobhan: Knox appeared on a Curious Situation segment during MSNBC's show Tucker with Tucker Carlson.

Recording resumes: