Hello, this is Travis Loyd. I wanted to make one additional attempt to get get myself removed from the do not hire list, if I am on one, this time with some additional detail of events.
I’m not looking to get hired again at Micron, but have been working to get hired elsewhere.
It seems when I interview somewhere everything goes amazing right up until they verify my appointment, at which point they ghost me, completely cutting off communication (which has just happened again). Whether I’m on a do not hire list or not, I think someone may be verifying my employment queries along with doing or saying something to hurt my chances at employment.
In the chance that you may be able to help me, because I see that you were employed during the time I experienced things, I’ll give some context of what happened from my perspective. I used to avoid giving names as I wanted to protect others, but that’s no longer necessary as many of the people are no longer employed at Micron.
It was a time in my career when I had the thought that I may be in my dream job, the job I could do the rest of my life until I retire. I loved my coworkers and the work I was doing. It almost felt karmic then when suddenly I was under investigation. I didn’t care at all though and just went on with my life. I have quite a bit of security background, and I saw my work pc as only for work, so nothing personal was installed on it or anything not work related.
I was flagged for having a connection through the proxy via ssh to my home network. When I joined the team I asked Chris Cadieux (possibly misspelled) if I could setup the connection, knowing that it was a bit of a gray area. It is a gray area because someone bad could use it for bad, but someone responsible could just use it from time to time to check on their computers. I didn’t really have a need for it, could always just use my cell phone, even back then I had a vpn to my house 100% of the time, but the cell phone reception in the area where I was seated was bad. Chris gave me permission saying, “long as it doesn’t raise any red flags I don’t care”. Chris was not my manager, Tom was, Chris was above Tom, so I figured this higher level permission was sufficient. Later I learned he also gave permission to Ethan Pang, who was using it to play video games while at work.
So Tom one day asked if I had a connection, and I said yes, and he said, “to turn it off”. I was like, “ok”. From my perspective I had been given permission and it had just been taken ok, which was fine. Tom then said more excitedly, “it’s a fireable offense”. And I said, “ok”. It may have seemed like I didn’t care, which I didn’t, because I had permission. I didn’t want to say Chris had given me permission cause I didn’t want to get him in trouble. I’ve always worked to protect my manager and I put Chris in that category of protection also, though I didn’t know him before this and in my career at Micron would guess I probably interacted with Chris less than an hour total, due to the investigation.
I mentioned this to some friends and heard of several people getting flagged for having a connection through the firewall, some were using it to watch sports which was normally blocked at Micron. All were stories of people misusing the connection, and nothing happened to any of them after they turned it off, seemed to me that since I had been given permission, certainly I should be left alone pretty quick.
Everything seemed over but then Chris called me into his office and said I had threatened someone. I had no idea what he was talking about. Eventually he gave detail, an IM. Then a name. And I laughed and said no, asked him what I threatened to do with a smile. Of course I hadn’t threatened anyone so it was pretty funny to me how easily people can misinterpret things. He calmed down a bit and said, “oh, I thought it was real”, and I said no … I’ve known that guy for a few years we are ok, used to work with him on a previous team. I didn’t give it another thought.
Over the next few weeks he’d come by and ask a question about the Todd now and then, about how I knew them. I thought Chris was just making small talk, and I was getting a chance to get to know him. I’d tell him about the guy. The stories were all from a time 4 years prior when there was pressure on the field services team to get them to improve, field services had been contracted out to save money, and Micron was working to improve the numbers. I hadn’t a care in the world as my numbers were top numbers, and I showed up and left on schedule like a robot. I’ve always felt if you are top performer then you don’t have to be worried about being let go, if someone does let you go then can be confident it has nothing to do with you. The person, Todd was working as the right-hand of the lead at the time, Brekka. And he seemed to be spying on the team for her, which was obvious cause she’d come down and immediately yell at folks. I was training up a coworker interested in scripting and gave him an example which would brute force every password, which would of course take thousands of years, but the topic usually captures the interest of someone learning. A few minutes later Brekka came down and looked at the whiteboard saying she wasn’t stupid, she knew what that was, that I was teaching him to be a hacker. I kept a straight face knowing she really didn’t understand, and Todd got up laughing following her out the door when she left. I learned later on that she was assigned to really come down hard on folks, and after the numbers were up they replaced her. At one point a coworker told me that Todd had told them don’t get too attached to Travis, they were working to get all the top paid employees fired. At some point I told this to Chis with a smile. All my stories were positive, I didn’t have anything against Todd, I didn’t really know him. Todd once told me in his previous job he was responsible for getting people fired as needed. He said often you just had to do one little thing and it would drive the people crazy and they’d end up getting themselves fired. In my mind this put him in a category of someone not to mess with, and if I was ever in a lead position where I needed to get rid of someone I could check in with him for some techniques I could use. I also told this to Chris. This is all a long time ago, but I remember it was an ongoing joke where I’d speak about him being powerful and I’d never want to get on his bad side. (granted i probably only passed him in the hall like maybe 3 times since i left that field services position, really there was very little interaction or history, a professional networking contact) I remember Chris once asked if I considered Todd a friend and I said no, in my mind I wasn’t inviting him back to my house for pizza and video games, and really I barely knew him. I’ve always tended to keep personal life and work separate. I wonder if Chris completely misinterpreted this answer.
To add context, I had been warned on 4 occasions by my coworker Joe that Chris was emotionally unstable. Each time he said, “We will go to the meetings so you don’t have to, there is no reason you should ever have to talk with him, we will protect you from him”. I didn’t know him so part of me just thought Joe didn’t have social skills its only later that I understood.
I went to my previous manager from the field services job, Lori Burelle, and gave her some detail, she said I could just sign whatever it is they are concerned about, that the corrective action will come and go and then the manager will sign that the behavior has been corrected and it will all be thrown away like it never happened. So eventually when asked to sign I did. At first I refused cause the writeup wasn’t true, Chris asked well how would you like it to read. The write up said that after being told to turn the connection off that I began working with my manager to try and get it turned back on again. I wanted them to write it something like, “Spoke with my manager to ensure that I was in compliance with Micron policy.”, but they refused after leaving the room and coming back like 10 times Chris added, “Travis continues to say that this isn’t true”, and I signed.
See, at one point I was in a meeting with Tom and Chris and Chris explained that Tom had a connection through the firewall which Chris and Micron were ok with. It allowed Tom access to his security system. So later on I asked Tom if the problem was the connection itself or if there was a way that I could do it that Micron would be ok with. This was all via IM, which I’m sure the security guys were watching, not that I cared. I learned about promiscuous mode back in college, no security person was catching me saying anything I shouldn’t be saying. In my mind I was thinking I could establish an RDP session via web interface, this would allow the security scanning tools to work like they do with any website, and not that I was transferring any files, I wasn’t, but if I did they could be scanned with the usual tools. I figured this would be ok but Tom just said no, so I left it off.
Though I had done nothing wrong I signed following Lori’s advice. Also I thought this would protect Chris from looking bad for having given me permission. On the last day I said, “you do remember giving me permission to have the connection right”? Chris said no, Tom looked a little shocked but said nothing, Tom always said nothing. So maybe Chris genuinely didn’t remember, but Ethan told me at one point, “do you still have that connection to your house, yes, turn it off they are really coming down on Travis”, so I don’t know if he remembered giving me permission or not. Within the team there was a constant sharing of bizarro stories about Chris, seemed like 1 or 2 a week. My cube mate said he’s asked Chris repeatedly to let him take his class online but that Chris would always say no you have to attend in person, and that when the class was over he’d said, “next time I want to be remote”, and that Chris had laughed at him saying, “if you wanted to take it remote you should have said so”, so maybe he genuinely didn’t remember.
After signing the corrective action I was also asked to initial a page of really basic security concepts, just to confirm that I knew the policy. I started reading the summary up top but my brain kept resetting, I was so tired of all this, I asked if the summary up top was the same as on the corrective action and Chris smiled and said yes. So I initialed, and I although the wording from the previous corrective action was absolutely misleading it had been written technically true … I mean I did contact someone about setting up a connection via the firewall, but the reality was I was working with my manager to get something in place that was consistent with Micron policy, if that was possible, so… what I would expect Micron would want from an ideally performing employee. But whatever. Chris said they were going to pretend like nothing happened and wanted to never speak about it again. (Almost two years later I would learn the corrective action write up “mysteriously” disappeared, the one which said, “Travis continues to say this isn’t true”, and only the initialed document remained, and the wording wasn’t the same … Chris had lied right to my face, it was all different and way worse and complete and total confession of insubordination, the kind of person I would never want to hire. They changed it to say Travis contacted someone looking for a new way around the firewall after being told to turn it off, they changed it from saying “contacted his manager”, I have a hard time believing Micron HR would allow this, yet there it was… among other changes making me look terrible, and with no one on my side I checked true trying to be a good employee. I never could have imaged Chris would have lied to me like that. Tom was there, you can ask him, but he’s a survivor and I think terrified of Chris, doubt he’ll say anything if you ask. Tom did say “you are saying its true”, seemed he did make one effort to help me, but he didn’t tell me the wording had all been changed.)
Three months later, during which I also lost my stock options because I was on corrective action during the holidays, (which didn’t make me happy, but whatever), I went to speak with Chris just because I wanted to be on the same page. I went to his office and said I wanted to talk about the write up because it was so exaggerated as to essentially not be true, I couldn’t understand why they would want to punish me. And he said, “we made up that punishment rather than punish you for something else, because that would have really been bad for your career.”. I asked, “what?”, he said shyly, “because you thought that guy was out to get you”. I literally had no idea what he was talking about. I asked, “who?”, and he screamed, like a woman, at the top of his lungs, “TODD!!!”, it was absolutely terrifying. I’d never witnessed such a level of rage in my life, on tv or in person, I would not have even known it were possible. I looked to the door for an escape path, if he were to come over the table I could not have made it to the door in time. It wasn’t scary like he was tough, but more like he wasn’t in control of himself and he was completely insane with rage. Then he instantly calmed down and looking at his desk like in another world said, “Travis, if you do anything to try and get rid of the corrective action I will add to it and then no team will hire you and you will never work at Micron again.”, then put his hands up palms up, kind of like ‘there ya go’. I had no idea what to do so I left the office and began searching for a new team, it took like 9 months, but I finally got out of there. In one of the interviews an interviewer told me he was best friends with Chris and proceed to essentially sabotage the interview. It appeared to me that Chris new I was job searching so I stopped doing internal job searches and instead used the external interface which I think may have helped.
In any case, once I was in the new position I began working to get the nonsense off my record because I was told it would be there forever. I didn’t want people thinking I thought someone was out to get me, that’s just insane. I’ve always been anti-bully, so I was kind of offended by the accusation. I would never have thought anything would offend me but to suggest I would bully actually bothered me quite a bit. The backend engineering HR person gave me another HR person to contact if I wanted to take any further steps. So I emailed them, once established in the new department.
I believe now this was a mistake, I think the new IT department had their own HR person who I should have contacted, the person I contacted Sue told me in the first email communication that her friend had overseen that case, which kind of shocked me… was she telling me that she would back up her friend even if her friend had messed up? What does it mean that she’s telling me her friend was in the investigation. I kept asking for evidence because I knew there was none. I didn’t want to say anything about Chris’ instability because I didn’t want people to think it was some sort of long running war between him, given that I barely knew him at all, and I wasn’t trying to out his instability if it wasn’t already on record. Also, I was concerned he might seek revenge given that he had threatened me. I just assumed with no evidence an hr person would look into things and ask why would you punish someone who did nothing, and when no one answered, it would all just go away. … it’s like this, if I said a young woman was just pulled into a room with a man who locked the door and I thought something bad was going to happen I would expect a response, and if the person in authority did nothing I would think I must not have spoke clearly, I would try again. I got pulled into this cognitive dissonance space where I kept asking for help and the hr person did nothing. Cognitive dissonance: If I did nothing wrong that should be evident, and I should be set free. They aren’t doing anything to set me free, they must think I’ve done something wrong. I ask what it is they think I’ve done wrong, no response. Eventually I told the HR person that Chris told me they made up the write up, we know it isn’t true, they wanted to punish me for this other thing … I asked for them to investigate the other thing, let’s do it, but she wouldn’t. Near the end I said I was going to repeat all my behaviors from the previous job, and if there was something I shouldn’t do she would need to tell me otherwise I will probably do it again. I’m assuming at this point her job is to be a professional “brick wall”. I still believe if she’d just invited me up for a meeting, in like 20 minutes this all would have been resolved, but she wouldn’t do it. Email only, for what seemed like 2 years. I kept asking to have the correct action rebuttal to be replaced with an updated copy, my way of trying to get through to her … in the end she came across as completely incompetent (or really good at being a brick wall).
I was told by a friend in security that all the security folks involved had all been on the team less than 6 months and they were looking to justify their budget. A friend who said they were friends with the person leading the security team had told her he felt like maybe he overreacted, which sounded almost like he was apologizing, but no one was removing anything from my record so who knows. What really baffles me is that Todd was available for the security team to talk to, he was on Micron’s security team after all, and he must have said, “Travis and I are ok as far as I know, though we barely know each other”. Seems that should have ended it.
What I think may have happened is that Chris, known for being emotionally unstable, may have asked me questions trying to create a reality he wanted to be true. Joe once told me that Chris hated system administrators. And, another coworker (I forget his name, but he took over after Chris left the position), said that Chris told him he was just sick of dealing with it and wanted to just punish me so he could get back to working on other things. Also, I think Chris with his emotional issues probably thinks people are out to get him, (I’m just guessing here, I honestly have no idea how an employee who did nothing wrong could become the victim of such a fantasy out of nowhere with what sounds like maybe 5 people being involved behind the scenes), if he thinks people are out to get him maybe it is reasonable for him to think other people also believe people are out to get them? According to a youtube video I watched on borderline personality disorder, it is pretty common for people to speak completely normal sentences to those with mental health issues and through the rose-colored glasses of their instability they hear something completely different.
From my perspective, if I were a manager, if there was someone on my team really guilty of thinking someone was out to get them and they had threatened that innocent person, I would let them go. If this fantasy is genuinely what Chris believed, I find it insane that he would give the minimal punishment and then just pretend like nothing happened.
I can’t make sense out of anything that happened to me, it’s something I still occasionally lose sleep over just because it is an unsolvable mess, and for someone with basically photographic memory at times, all the details are unfortunately stored quite well.
All that said, I think if that was the only story I would probably still be working at Micron and happy as can be, but something else occurred which turned everything into a nightmare. This is something that someone in your position is hopefully already aware of, and if not perhaps it could help out Micron’s security, so I hope you did read this. I know it’s easy to see a lot of words and think, “word salad”, so just want to say I appreciate your time and hope I’ve provided some added value here besides just trying to get fair job verification checks.
I could feel that security was watching me, similar to how a woman might say she can feel a guy undressing her with her eyes. This might sounds like nonsense or paranoia, but in that scenario what you feel are the persons emotions, and in this case the people monitoring me were not blissed out and filled with love, so yes I could feel it. The energy was heavy, controlling, and repressive. It was unpleasant. Now, security may believe people can’t tell when they are monitoring someone but this is not true. It may be true in most cases, but not always. To prove to myself I was right I put together a little script to track which app I was being monitored with. I emailed it to myself as base64, converted it and ran it and it was on my screen that microsoft communicator was maxing out the bandwidth in the way you might see if you were watching youtube. This was the answer, why would chat being using that much data? I could feel the person on the other side panic, and then they disconnected the session. After that I stopped using microsoft communicator and started instead running citrix and using the communicator through that. This stopped them from monitoring me. After a plead by higher ups for us all to upgrade to Windows10, I eventually did. This was a mistake, the monitoring resumed which I’d like to now call harassment. I’m telling you this because as a person in a position of leadership, if the person being monitored has enough technical ability to detect they are being monitored, then you are essentially harassing them by monitoring them without end. Bullying, which eventually, through the heavy repressive energy got me thinking about suicide all the time. I made many efforts in desperation, typing on the screen, trying to convey that I wasn’t the enemy, sometimes begging them to leave me alone, sometimes trying to explain I don’t know why it is they won’t leave me alone, sometimes calling them out for being horrible people. I’m anti-bullying, someone who always has hoped for years that if I were to witness bullying that I would be brave enough stand up and protect them, say something, but what do you do when you are the one being bullied?
I’ve watched youtube videos of criminals complaining about getting caught and not liking the treatment, and I’ve laughed at them, maybe people just thought I was a guilty horrible person, so they enjoyed causing me suffering. I’ll never know cause no one was using their words. Sue once said, “we aren’t going to remove it just cause you are trying to nag me until I do”, kind of conveys she never was listening. That’s the kind of thing I’d say to someone caught on video attacking a person and claiming innocence.
It’s awful to be treated like a criminal when you’ve done nothing wrong, I have lived the “Standford prison experiment” at Micron, and it was the worst experience of my life. I left before I killed myself, but I continued to lose sleep, lost friends cause I was too tired to do anything, lost my social network cause I stopped going to hobbies, some call it “Corporate PTSD”. Eventually, after removing all Micron contacts from Facebook and Linkedin my life started getting back on track. Not sure how that works but whatever the reason, finally starting to get back to living. Going from feeling like I was in my dream job and that it was time to find someone and start a family, instead I’ve lost like 8 years of life, what I think should have been some of the best years, that all feels to have been taken away from me. Now that things are getting back on track it seems that I am still not free, I don’t want to have to think about this stuff anymore. If Sue is still there or something getting some revenge, or there is something on a record that’s cause people to misrepresent me, please assist me here. The damage was great but I’d like to move on, please, if there is something there, assist to set me free. I can be compassionate to his mental health issues, but it’s unfair to have someone who I interacted with for like an hour, to continue to have so much influence over me.
I know this is a lot of words, there is a lot more I could type, for example someone told me they were his first manager (Mike Adolf) when he started at Micron and that he would become more and more enraged when he wanted one of his ideas to be implemented, Mike said he had to just cut him off and that when he passes him in the hall he’ll nod but always keeps walking to avoid him. There must be a record on him a mile long, maybe just look at that then help to set me free here … please. I’ve missed two absolute dream jobs so far … both 190k, unlimited pto, paid healthcare … If you genuinely think I’ve done something wrong all those years ago just ask so I can respond without our conversation having to pass through Chris’ mental health filter.