No beer, baked goods or depressing books and mandatory 6am workouts: Former Lululemon worker on how the yoga-wear chain is like a cult

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 17:13 EST, 1 January 2014 | UPDATED: 17:42 EST, 1 January 2014

Working it out: The writer exercised every day with her fellow Lululemon employees (posed by model)

Working it out: The writer exercised every day with her fellow Lululemon employees (posed by model)

A New York writer has lifted the lid on the cult-like corporate atmosphere of high-end yoga retailer Lululemon.

At first, Mary Mann writes that she was tempted by the fact that the company offered to pay for exercise classes including yoga, spinning and kickboxing - and the employee camaraderie.

'At Lululemon, salesgirls are called educators and customers are called guests, a touch of class that helps to justify both the $100 yoga pants and the hours of life spent selling them,' Ms Mann writes on Salon.com.

In addition to the free yoga classes, the brand is known for using local 'ambassadors' who 'embody the Lululemon lifestyle' to broaden its following.

Ms Mann initially bonded with her co-educators over gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free cookies.

She hit her first stumbling block after being asked to write a goal sheet listing her life plans for the next 10 years.

Her aspiration was actually to get an office job.

But she began to believe that she owed the company that had invested so much time into her training.

Ms Mann's first few weeks passed in a daze of constant workouts - including spin classes, night yoga and Saturday morning run clubs in the park. 

Indeed, she soon learned that exercise was 'basically mandatory'.  She writes: 'If you skipped a day it was obvious and people asked if you were feeling OK.' 

To fit in with her athletic co-workers, Ms Mann also began avoiding her favorite vices such as baked goods, beer and the Russian literature that one Lululemoner called 'a downer'. 

At a mandatory meeting, another colleague discussed her experience with Landmark, a $600 self-help seminar that any Lululemon employee was invited to attend for free after six months of work.  

Ms Mann's fellow educator explained how Landmark taught her that 'everything is a story' and that if she wanted to be happy, she simply had to change her story.

Corporate culture: Lululemon's outreach programs have inspired a huge following, but Ms Mann says that behind closed doors the company expects its workers to adopt a certain set of values

Corporate culture: Lululemon's outreach programs have inspired a huge following, but Ms Mann says that behind closed doors the company expects its workers to adopt a certain set of values

Ms Mann was becoming more and more disillusioned with the simplistic philosophy - and with the days spent selling stretch pants to banker's wives.

'I worked in a sea of brightly colored stretch pants and body dysmorphia,' she says. 'And so I remained, in stasis and spandex,' she writes. 

One day, fellow educator told her that she should aspire to be like the store's fictional 'ideal customer' named Ocean who 'does yoga every day, makes $100,000 a year, and dates a triathlete named Mountain'. 

That night, Mann says she sent out several resumes for editorial jobs and unpaid internships.

'I worked in a sea of brightly colored stretch pants and body dysmorphia. If you skipped a day [of exercise] people asked if you were feeling okay.'

The monotony was broken at an emergency meeting, where Ms Mann was told that a Lululemon educator had been killed by burglars in a Maryland store.

When she found out that the woman had actually been murdered by a co-worker, who cut herself and tied both up afterward to make it look like a robbe, she became increasingly creeped out by the corporate culture.

Ms Mann writes that though most of her co-workers were basically good people, the murder somehow seemed inevitable given the climate.

'The idea that you could shape reality to look however you wanted suddenly seemed dangerous, easily abused, especially among my Type A co-workers, who exercised and worked and exercised and worked and ate so little that it was not really a surprise that someone, eventually, snapped.'

Everyone else got back into their daily routine, but Ms Mann quit shortly afterward.

She quit shortly afterward, and got a copywriting job two weeks later. But her time at the company was not spent in vain.

'The murder reminded me of everything I’d been avoiding by hewing to the always happy Lululemon way of life,' she wrote.

'The anxiety of choice, the fear of failure; not trying to be Ocean but rather taking the risk to be me — baked goods, beer, downer books and all.'

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Maryland case was sales clerk caught stealing for the second time killing her manager before she could report her.Does Lululemon drive people to steal?

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Sounds a lot like what George Orwell called the 'Outer Party'. Coming to an employer or school near you if you don't take notice in time.

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Certain yoga positions make women emit loud flatulence.

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Why work for a place like that? Sheep! Sheep everywhere.

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So don't work there!!!!!

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Another example of mentality that we must all be slender and TAUT and have amazing bodies to be relevant......and the mental toll it takes on mere mortal humans who grow older, lose elasticity, display the inevitability of gravity. Ladies and gentlemen of all ages: don't be obese, eat some fruits and veggies here and there, try to walk a couple miles a week..........do not let culture idiotic and impossible expectations decide who u r.......or r not.

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Whackos

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Mapdoc:::: think of you dumb response.... She has a job now..... After this article she will not. Think ahead you dope... Pick you punches or pay the price.

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Mapdoc:::: think of you dumb response.... She has a job now..... After this article she will not. Think ahead you dope... Pick you punches or pay the price.

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