Chapter 20:

You can’t fire me, I quit!

I was going to resign in spectacular, bridge-burning fashion. Publicly. Not behind closed doors with a thank you hope to see you soon it’s been amazing thank you for all the opportunities blah blah blah. There would be no fawning but fake announcements about how I was leaving to spend more time with my family, which everyone in the business world and everywhere else knows means you got fired or let go or laid off or whatever the right lingo is for being left with no job.

I would not hide out at home licking my wounds, safely ensconced with a “soft landing,” which in my case was a million-dollar bribe to keep me quiet. I had refused to be silenced for almost two years with the specter of losing my job always looming. I certainly wasn’t going to silence myself now about why I’d been shoved out the door.

On February 13, 2022, I sent the following email to Chip, cc-ing the Chairman of the Board and Tracy, the head of Human Resources:

Chip:
After some deliberation, I’ve made the decision to leave Levi’s. I am hereby submitting my formal resignation as President and EVP of Levi’s, effective immediately. Please let me know what you would like me to do with my phone and computer, which I won’t be using or reviewing after this email. Should you need to get ahold of me, please use my personal email also cc’d here. 
Jen  

At the very moment I sent the email, celebrities including Justin Bieber and LeBron James were enjoying the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, reveling barefaced after two years of isolation. (If you believe Bieber and James were actually isolating for the prior two years, well then I have a bridge to sell you.)

Despite the mask requirement and calls for caution at the game, over 60,000 people gathered to cheer and drink and party. The Super Bowl was a veritable ”super spreader” event if ever there was one. Nonetheless, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti hobnobbed barefaced with a who’s who of revelers. You’d think Garcetti would have been more careful about appearing in a photo without his mask, trying to set a good example or just not get dragged as a hypocrite. AGAIN. Just two weeks prior, at the playoff game that qualified the L.A. Rams for the Big Game, Garcetti was “caught” hamming it up for the camera mask-free with Magic Johnson. His response when criticized for his “rules for thee but not for me” behavior – he’d set the mask rule after all – I held my breath for the photo.

The next day there would be headlines about the ongoing charade of endless covid restrictions. It was all just noise at this point. Mayors and Governors and unelected public health officials would set the rules, ever more complicated and onerous and Byzantine, and break them. They’d make some dumb excuse no one believed, and then do it all over again the next day. Their “let them eat cake” attitude didn’t seem to bother people very much. Everyone seemed to just accept the hypocrisy. It’s as if they appreciated the act, the virtuous pose, even if wasn’t backed up with action or belief. At least they pretend to say the “right” thing, a true sucker might utter. That’s better than not pretending. But is it?

Also on the next day, preschoolers in Los Angeles would be required to wear masks for the entire day, and grade schoolers in Oakland would be required to wear masks and keep their distance from each other, even while outside at recess. But the folks who could afford Superbowl tickets, or simply knew the right people to be gifted tickets, didn’t pay any mind to these children. They felt safe, ensconced among the clean, triple vaccinated and wealthy. Why heed the rules? They had beers to drink, a Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg half-time show to watch. They couldn’t be bothered to think about why two-year-olds in diapers, who are just learning to talk, should endure forcible masking all day, something none of them could tolerate for a three-hour football game.

Did they really believe that covering the faces of toddlers in cheaper by the dozen Paw Patrol masks would prompt the end of the pandemic? If they didn’t believe it, how could they just accept it without protest? Our kids’ social, emotional and educational development was at stake.

For two years, I had never stopped railing against the cruelty and hypocrisy.

And so I was offered a separation package to leave quietly. But instead, I decided to quit, so that I could leave on my own terms. I would not be leaving Levi’s quietly.

I had a plan. It had developed in the eleventh hour, but it was a plan, nonetheless. There would be another headline the next day, too. About me.

After sending my resignation email, I turned off my computer and phone and walked away from a job I loved, a million dollars in severance and a community I’d been a part of for over two decades. I wept as the whirring of my computer slowed then quieted – tears of both disappointment and relief that it was finally over. The conflict that had engulfed my final two years at Levi’s was ending. Not how I’d hoped it would, but it was ending nonetheless.

It took a few hours to get a response. The email recipients were presumably enjoying the Superbowl, if not alongside the Biebers then in a likeminded spirit. Chip was possibly at the game. Before the pandemic, he often went. I had no idea if he was there or not. Knowing him, he probably opted to stay at home, much less carefree about the restrictions than those who’d enacted them.

I didn’t want to know if anyone had responded. My work phone was shut down and put away in a drawer in my bedroom until I knew where to return it. I told my husband to hold my personal phone and not let me have it, even if I begged. I couldn’t bear to read any response that might come through, but he had my permission to let me know if one did. I was afraid I’d change my mind if that was possibly on offer. I’d wiggle out of my plan. I’d let them placate me with money and platitudes and praise of my two decades of service. They’d offer a little more money, if I’d stay until they found my replacement (which as of this writing, more than seven months later, they still have not found) – it’s just two months, four months, a year, who cares! What’s a few more months among friends. Oh and keep quiet. And don’t be so dramatic. Why make trouble? We know you care about this issue of kids and school but it’s gone too far. C’mon already. Just stop. C’MON, Jen, this is how it’s done.

A few hours later the email came. My husband read it to me from my phone:

Jen,
Wow, this is a shock, especially after our last few conversations.  Can we discuss this?  I’m copying [my assistant] – can you set up some time with her for us to talk sometime tomorrow (Monday?) 
Chip

Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. It took everything I had to ignore it, not to respond, not to smooth over the thing I had planned that hadn’t happened yet but would in about twelve hours.

They had no idea what was coming.