Karen Kilgariff
speaker
3,962 appearances
39 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 8 Jun
Karen Kilgariff’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Right. So when I first Googled this, a couple of Huffington Post articles came up and one that I really liked is by a girl named, believe it or not, Elizabeth Licorice. And great. That's a great stage name. Oh my God, she wins. Yeah. Amazing. She's all red and her skin is twisted. Uh-huh. No, no.
Delete that. Stephen, mark that concept. Okay, so she wrote an article called Lululemon's Cult Culture, Get Fit or Die Trying. So this girl started working at Lululemon. That's how you pronounce it, right? Lululemon? Yeah.
It sounds right? It's how it's spelled and that's what I assumed.
Lululemon? I think it's Lululemon. But there's an extra... Lululemon would be... There's too many Lus. All right. So I think it's Lululemon. Let's call it... Let's not give a shit. Okay. All right. So... I think you're right. I think you're right. It has... This girl worked there. And so she's talking about what a creepy culture this business has.
which is very funny because like when I worked at the Gap in the 90s and I only worked there for a year, I really hated it. But it is this thing where they want you as a person that's getting paid shit and mostly working part-time so they don't have to give you full-time benefits and all that stuff. But they still want you to really dig into this.
Yeah, this, the culture, the retail culture of like, and if you sell this, you'll get this and we have to get our numbers up here. Meanwhile, Dawn Fisher, the owner at the time, was making like billions of dollars. Ew, I hate that. So I can see where that was in the 90s. It's now, you know, 20 years later and they have refined this concept.
So it's like branding and marketing and, you know, lifestyle choices and it's all that kind of stuff. I bet it's the kind of thing where they don't call you an employee. They call you like a team member or whatever the fuck. The Thighmaster. So this girl, yeah, this girl worked there and talked about that...
She said, Lululemon wants you to know it's elevating the world from mediocrity to greatness and creating components for people to live long, healthy and fun lives.
No, no, no. No, you have to get really superficial to rise above media. But if you dig deeper, you'll find you'll learn about Landmark Forum. No, they don't. Yes. Which is the ultra secretive, eerily cultish educational series, which Lululemon employees are strongly encouraged to attend. Shut up.
yes now Lou now I know I have a friend who did landmark forum and is like I believe in it I think it's great and I said yeah but isn't it a crazy pyramid scheme where you basically have to bring people in and you spend thousands of dollars and he goes yeah but I just didn't do that like I got what I wanted and I left and I'm like well you're you're a strong-willed person yeah but I think it's one of those things that like it's like est or anything that just it makes money off of people kind of going this is the answer to my life and then trying to get everyone I know into it so oh it makes me sad so
So they encourage their employees to go to the Landmark Forum, which is bizarre to me. So bizarre. And before you're in line for Landmark, you're bombarded with Brian Tracy motivational CDs and a book club that culminates with Atlas Shrugged. Oh, shit. Yeah. So it's not... It's so culty.
It's like, get that money and get yours and empowerment, but in this weird culty way, which also it's like, this is your job. This is your retail job. Yeah. Yeah. So...
She said all of it made walking into work feel like she was time traveling to Salem because with the Lululemon Creed and catechism comes a collective mentality that thrives on scapegoats and leaves you feeling worthless if you subsist on anything but spring water and kale. Once another employee sneered at me from across the floor and said,
and said the soda I happened to be enjoying would rot me from the inside out. Eventually, we were all issued reusable acrylic cups and forbidden to drink anything but water. Oh my God, stop it.
So this is... I'm just trying to paint a little bit of a picture and I really encourage if you're slightly interested in this to look up these articles because it's pretty fascinating how many directions that goes in of... Yeah, that sounds like a fun read. Yeah. Well, and just the intensity of a retail job.
Right. And when you work there, everything about you is inventoried and measured in terms of authenticity and integrity, which sounds reasonable until you realize your yoga mats on a sweaty, slippery slope that missing your extra... I'm still reading the article.
Uh, missing your extracurricular kickboxing class, taking too long to pee during your break or falling to throw or failing to throw a kitchen party. And then she says in parentheses, don't ask what, um, in the fitting room means you're deficient in character and devoid of morals.
I'm going to ask. We have to find out. But it's like, I think it's in, you know, it's secret in-house language. Yeah. Those girls happen to just be older, sportier versions of seriously cutthroat sorority sisters. So that's one person's take about what it felt like to work there. So what's kind of to go along with that, this company's had a lot of controversy since they started.
It's a Canadian company. They opened in, well, in 2002 to mark the opening of their second store in Vancouver. They offered a free outfit to anyone who would stand naked on the street for 30 seconds.
But like also, so it's a store that's mostly women's clothing. Yeah. And you're basically trying to get ladies to stand around naked so you give them their $140 yoga pants. That's so sad.
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