The same CEO in Florida who downplayed Hurricane Ian and told employees to bring their families and pets to the office so they could continue working through the hurricane also berated staffers after multiple employees allegedly called the police over the company’s COVID-19 protocols.
Video from an April 1, 2020 virtual staff meeting obtained by VICE News shows that Joy Gendusa, the CEO of the Clearwater, Florida-based marketing company PostcardMania, was shockingly scornful of employees’ fears of the COVID-19.
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In the video, Gendusa unequivocally dismissed the pandemic, which has gone on to kill over a million Americans and counting, as overblown.
Gendusa called the media “fearmongers” for its coverage of the virus, and “making people way more afraid than they need to be.”
“What’s happening is the politicians, because this is an election year, are caving in one by one to the media, and making everybody feel like they’re going to die from this thing,” Gendusa added, raising her voice. “And it’s not fricking true. And it’s really fucked up that they’re scaring everyone.”
For much of the meeting, however, she expressed fury at two anonymous employees who allegedly reported the company to the police for not following COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing requirements.
“I think we have the greatest staff on Earth,” Gendusa told employees. “But you always have couple of rotten fucking apples.”
“Let’s talk a little bit about karma,” Gendusa said. “We are people of goodwill, and I am keeping everybody here employed. If you don’t want to work here, go home… I am not forcing you to work.”
Gendusa said that the “sheriff’s office” did visit the office and didn’t appear to be concerned about the work environment. A spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office told VICE News that the sheriff’s office has not fielded any calls concerning PostcardMania since at least January 2020, and forwarded questions to the Clearwater Police Department, which has jurisdiction over the area. The Clearwater Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.
But even though the police report didn’t appear to lead to anything, Gendusa appeared to not be satisfied. During the call, she pointed to her eyes and then the screen, before saying “If you don’t like us, if you don’t like the way I run this company, get the fuck out.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just real. What can I tell you, that’s just how I feel about it,” added Gendusa.
Gendusa continued to reference the two employees whom she believed called the police throughout the video.
“We have such an amazing staff, except for those two people [who called the police]. I hate you,” Gendusa said. “No, I don’t really hate anybody, you’re just really not part of this group…you don’t belong here amongst the rest of us so you could probably just quit your job … I mean, shit, you can get all kinds of government stuff for free, so why don’t you just do that.”
At the time of the staff meeting, even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who later became a crusader against any and all COVID mandates—had placed the state under an effective lockdown and restricted non-essential activities. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 3,700 residents in Pinellas County, where PostcardMania’s headquarters is located, have died from COVID-19, according to CDC statistics.
PostcardMania did not immediately respond to a request for comment from VICE News about the video. But in a blog post published on the PostcardMania website earlier this month, Gendusa credited her handling of the pandemic early on with the company’s growth.
“Don’t get me wrong, March 2020 was a scary time. A number of small businesses were forced to close, and uncertainty gripped the nation,” Gendusa wrote. “But for me, I was 100% certain about two things: 1. We weren’t going to lay anyone off. 2. We weren’t going to cut back on our marketing.”
In the days since PostcardMania came under fire for insisting that the company would operate through Hurricane Ian as normal to meet end of quarter goals, Gendusa has apologized for her communications to employees while maintaining that the company’s preparation for the hurricane prioritized company safety.
In a video statement published Thursday, Gendusa reiterated her apology to employees for her handling of the communications. But she also said that the “media frenzy” around coverage of PostcardMania’s communications to employees prior to Hurricane Ian, and the subsequent damage control it required, distracted the company from focusing on hurricane prep.
“I was trying to calm people down and I didn’t, and because of that, a whole bunch of undue distress ensued, a media frenzy that we then had to make a priority to handle instead of everything else we were trying to do for the storm and our employees,” Gendusa said.
The eye of Hurricane Ian ultimately diverted away from the Clearwater area after earlier projections that it could be the strongest hurricane to hit the Tampa Bay area in more than a century.
In the video published Thursday, Gendusa also insisted that she wasn’t asking employees to work through the hurricane, saying: “I would never do that.” But a transcript obtained by VICE News from the staff meeting Monday shows that Gendusa told employees that while employee safety is “of utmost importance, I honestly want to continue to deliver and I want to have a good end of quarter, and when it turns into nothing I don’t want it to be like ‘Great, we all stopped producing because of the media.’”
Gendusa also said the company is forming a “task force” to help with Hurricane Ian relief. “There are always lessons to be learned, and I wish the world was a more forgiving place. We all wish that,” Gendusa said in the Thursday video.
“We have an open door policy at PostcardMania,” she added. “I really wish the person who was offended could have gone to their manager or come to me directly, and we could have avoided all of this.”
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