Twin A
Patron with Honors
Around 1993, there was a big Gold muster outside of Building 36 [the newest Admin Building containing HCO GOLD, HEM (Hubbard E Meter Dept.), TAPES, CMU up top, later on, FILM Packaging and Shipping, TREAS Gold, Exec Offices, OGO (Org Gold Officer, letter writers) spaces, and maybe more I'm forgetting]. DM personally wanted to tell us all how non productive we had been, but he had already tried it directly at a Saturday base meeting and it was not enough.
COB just had to humiliate everyone even more. He had us all given a copy of the Policy Letter about "worker orientation", the story about the Hershey chocolate bar factory. LRH figured out that despite the best staff conditions at Hershey, the workers felt guilty all the time because they were getting such great treatment and so they revolted and were non productive. Thus, the LRH suggestion was to treat your staff like shit and they will be happier and work harder. That is paraphrased of course. We all had to starrate this issue and CMO GOLD and Security Gold had to make sure we all did it and reported compliance to DM.
DM then had the Port Captain Gold's office (Muriel, Diane Lester and Ken Hoden) go out and buy a bunch of Hershey chocolate bars and hand them out to each staff member. I remember Jan Lew, the Set Sound Recordist, look at me and say "Hey, this is nice of COB, I love chocolate..." and then she ate the chocolate bar. I took my chocolate bar and threw it away. We both got reprimanded by the Dir I &R Gold because we had been ordered to put them on our desks and leave them there. They were a symbol of how all of us Gold staff were apparently being treated so well by COB and that we were letting him down and not producing. We were just like the slack offs that LRH was talking about from the Hershey Bar Chocolate Bar story.
The emotional shellackings got worse later, but I was on the RPF out around '97, so BFG and LBV have more info on all that.
This is another story, oh around 1994:
Mark Yaeger, at DM's orders, came down to a base breifing on a Saturday and he wanted to explain the step "Deliver an effective blow to the enemies of the group despite personal danger". M.Y., with a crazy look on his face, explained that this step could no longer include that we consider our own ignorance, unhattedness, disorganization or confusions about our jobs as "enemies of the group". We could no longer merely find a why for our mistake and fix that as "an effective blow". We could no longer count facing up to our misgivings as any kind of personal danger. He explained that if Ghengis Khan had labelled one of his warriors a Liability, not to be trusted --- that warrior would have to go out, risk his life, and kill some enemies and bring their heads back to Ghengis Khan
So, from them onwards, as part of our Liability steps, we had to find an "enemy" of the group and "deliver an effective blow to them" as part of our Liability steps. This turned into a mandatory requirement that we work with another staff member who had been assigned lower conditions and get them through their formulas, at least up to where they had to find an enemy to effectively blow (whoops, that doesn't sound right does it?). It made getting through the condition of Liability twice as hard and take twice as long. It was also, for the most part a complete waste of time. Before M.Y. became the Liability formula dictator, I had much more fun doing Liability formulas. I did not like the mind set that any other staff member "in ethics trouble" was some kind of enemy whether they were assigned a condition of Enemy or below or not.
Third story: I only heard about this one, didn't observe it myself. This happened on the Freewinds in 1996 or 1997. One of the OT 8's was out on the beach of a Carribean island sun bathing. It was a nude beach. DM and Norman Starkey and some others had gone scuba diving nearby. They were executives of Scientology, so they could spent church donations on private scuba diving lessons and spend their post time scuba diving...that's another story. Anyway, they finished their under water adventures and they got out of the water on the wrong beach, on the nude beach. They saw this OT 8 on the nude beach nude. That night, during the Freewinds Maiden Voyage event, in front of all the other OT8's, a video got played on the big screens. It was a comical video of this OT8 getting caught (no nudity involved, just implied) the OT 8 had been forced to act in his own comedy video. He had to slink around the Freewinds acting like he had "missed withold" phenonmenon, and have the cameras follow him. He of course was later ordered to a Security Check as well. This video making fun of this public person who had probably donated over half a million dollars to Scientology was displayed to ALL the OT8s. It was a severe public humiliation. What a nice way to treat a patron huh? All DMs idea of course.
Another one of DMs ideas was in 1993 on the Freewinds. I had to follow him and other INT Execs around the Freewinds with a camera while they pretended to do the jobs of Freewinds staff. They'd put on the appropriate uniform (a deckies uniform, an Engineers coveralls, a Stewards outfit) and do the duties of the ship staff member they were imitating, in a goofy bad way. This video was intended to "lighten things up" among the OT8's during a Maiden Voyage cruise/celebration. It did actually get lots of laughs. But it was ALSO shown to the Freewinds crew, who were embarassed by it, it looked to them like the Int Execs were making fun of them and joking and degrading about their jobs. The fact of the matter is, the video would have gotten just as many laughs if the Int Execs had simply been videod doing jobs on the Freewinds, without the slapstick and goofiness. It was a tribute to DMs arrogance and a display of his lack of respect for how hard working the Freewinds staff were.
Here is a story about uniforms: There was a survey done around 1989 to find out what color of uniform each department of Cine wanted for their new uniforms. The Special Effects Department did not answer the survey in time, so DM ordered that the SO Uniforms Officer get them purple paisley shirts. They were hideous. He had it ordered special and then ordered the SFX department to wear them. They had these uniforms for years. It was humiliating. Of course, when Tom Cruise came through on a tour, they would wear regular SO blue uniform shirts. They also could not wear them off the base anywhere.
This is another story that I was told, did not see personally, but I heard it from a couple people so I know it's true:
Around 1998, David Miscavige berated a Cine staff member in front of the entire base (about 700 to 800 people back then) and accused him of being suppressive and trying to sabotage Scientology. This staff member, CG, had basically requested a state of the art lighting board and lighting equipment to be installed in the new Cine Studio/Castle. It would be a show piece of the application of LRH's ideas in the field of lighting as well as one of the best set ups in a large sound stage anywhere in the world. It would increase the efficiency of the film crew by hundreds of man hours, no doubt thousands over a period of time. It was a brilliant CSW. But DM didn't like the price and instead of quietly taking CG aside and asking him to try and get the costs down, DM publicly announced the guy as a saboteur in front of the entire base crew. DM was too much of a coward to have a simple friendly conversation with one of his hardest working Cine staff members. CG was mortified, felt completely horrible and he walked out of the staff meeting. When other base staff saw him, some of them would literally sneer at him. His wife stopped speaking to him.
CG didn't "cave in" and "quit" which was DM's litmus test for a suppressive by the way (if he publicly humiliated you and you caved in, you were "guilty" and an SP). CG redid his CSW for a different set of lights. The ancient dinasour kind that could be gotten used at an auction for very cheap. CG was then made to find the money for these old lights. CG found out that there was a collection of POs that had been underbilled and so there was money left that could be reallocated. CG spent hours and hours calling creditors and making sure that the bills had been acceptably paid, then he took the extra money from the POs, tallied it up and CSWd to get this reallocated to for his used lights. When he arrived in Treasury Gold he was yelled at, called names, kicked out. But he persisted. He eventually found out that the money WASN'T THERE. The Treas Sec Gold had figured out how to trick the Finance Computer system and had juggled the accounts to use the money left over from these previous POs on bills that HAD NO POs in the first place! CG was mistreated by COB and his goons and he finally just decided to route out. It took, i don't know, maybe a year, but he made it out. He then offered up his brilliant lighting ideas to professional film makers and they appreciated him, because they WANT to get great looking films made and fast. He's gotten work on many major blockbuster movies.
I can't figure out why ANYONE still in the SO is loyal to DM. He certainly isn't loyal to anybody but himself and he's an idiot.
COB just had to humiliate everyone even more. He had us all given a copy of the Policy Letter about "worker orientation", the story about the Hershey chocolate bar factory. LRH figured out that despite the best staff conditions at Hershey, the workers felt guilty all the time because they were getting such great treatment and so they revolted and were non productive. Thus, the LRH suggestion was to treat your staff like shit and they will be happier and work harder. That is paraphrased of course. We all had to starrate this issue and CMO GOLD and Security Gold had to make sure we all did it and reported compliance to DM.
DM then had the Port Captain Gold's office (Muriel, Diane Lester and Ken Hoden) go out and buy a bunch of Hershey chocolate bars and hand them out to each staff member. I remember Jan Lew, the Set Sound Recordist, look at me and say "Hey, this is nice of COB, I love chocolate..." and then she ate the chocolate bar. I took my chocolate bar and threw it away. We both got reprimanded by the Dir I &R Gold because we had been ordered to put them on our desks and leave them there. They were a symbol of how all of us Gold staff were apparently being treated so well by COB and that we were letting him down and not producing. We were just like the slack offs that LRH was talking about from the Hershey Bar Chocolate Bar story.
The emotional shellackings got worse later, but I was on the RPF out around '97, so BFG and LBV have more info on all that.
This is another story, oh around 1994:
Mark Yaeger, at DM's orders, came down to a base breifing on a Saturday and he wanted to explain the step "Deliver an effective blow to the enemies of the group despite personal danger". M.Y., with a crazy look on his face, explained that this step could no longer include that we consider our own ignorance, unhattedness, disorganization or confusions about our jobs as "enemies of the group". We could no longer merely find a why for our mistake and fix that as "an effective blow". We could no longer count facing up to our misgivings as any kind of personal danger. He explained that if Ghengis Khan had labelled one of his warriors a Liability, not to be trusted --- that warrior would have to go out, risk his life, and kill some enemies and bring their heads back to Ghengis Khan
So, from them onwards, as part of our Liability steps, we had to find an "enemy" of the group and "deliver an effective blow to them" as part of our Liability steps. This turned into a mandatory requirement that we work with another staff member who had been assigned lower conditions and get them through their formulas, at least up to where they had to find an enemy to effectively blow (whoops, that doesn't sound right does it?). It made getting through the condition of Liability twice as hard and take twice as long. It was also, for the most part a complete waste of time. Before M.Y. became the Liability formula dictator, I had much more fun doing Liability formulas. I did not like the mind set that any other staff member "in ethics trouble" was some kind of enemy whether they were assigned a condition of Enemy or below or not.
Third story: I only heard about this one, didn't observe it myself. This happened on the Freewinds in 1996 or 1997. One of the OT 8's was out on the beach of a Carribean island sun bathing. It was a nude beach. DM and Norman Starkey and some others had gone scuba diving nearby. They were executives of Scientology, so they could spent church donations on private scuba diving lessons and spend their post time scuba diving...that's another story. Anyway, they finished their under water adventures and they got out of the water on the wrong beach, on the nude beach. They saw this OT 8 on the nude beach nude. That night, during the Freewinds Maiden Voyage event, in front of all the other OT8's, a video got played on the big screens. It was a comical video of this OT8 getting caught (no nudity involved, just implied) the OT 8 had been forced to act in his own comedy video. He had to slink around the Freewinds acting like he had "missed withold" phenonmenon, and have the cameras follow him. He of course was later ordered to a Security Check as well. This video making fun of this public person who had probably donated over half a million dollars to Scientology was displayed to ALL the OT8s. It was a severe public humiliation. What a nice way to treat a patron huh? All DMs idea of course.
Another one of DMs ideas was in 1993 on the Freewinds. I had to follow him and other INT Execs around the Freewinds with a camera while they pretended to do the jobs of Freewinds staff. They'd put on the appropriate uniform (a deckies uniform, an Engineers coveralls, a Stewards outfit) and do the duties of the ship staff member they were imitating, in a goofy bad way. This video was intended to "lighten things up" among the OT8's during a Maiden Voyage cruise/celebration. It did actually get lots of laughs. But it was ALSO shown to the Freewinds crew, who were embarassed by it, it looked to them like the Int Execs were making fun of them and joking and degrading about their jobs. The fact of the matter is, the video would have gotten just as many laughs if the Int Execs had simply been videod doing jobs on the Freewinds, without the slapstick and goofiness. It was a tribute to DMs arrogance and a display of his lack of respect for how hard working the Freewinds staff were.
Here is a story about uniforms: There was a survey done around 1989 to find out what color of uniform each department of Cine wanted for their new uniforms. The Special Effects Department did not answer the survey in time, so DM ordered that the SO Uniforms Officer get them purple paisley shirts. They were hideous. He had it ordered special and then ordered the SFX department to wear them. They had these uniforms for years. It was humiliating. Of course, when Tom Cruise came through on a tour, they would wear regular SO blue uniform shirts. They also could not wear them off the base anywhere.
This is another story that I was told, did not see personally, but I heard it from a couple people so I know it's true:
Around 1998, David Miscavige berated a Cine staff member in front of the entire base (about 700 to 800 people back then) and accused him of being suppressive and trying to sabotage Scientology. This staff member, CG, had basically requested a state of the art lighting board and lighting equipment to be installed in the new Cine Studio/Castle. It would be a show piece of the application of LRH's ideas in the field of lighting as well as one of the best set ups in a large sound stage anywhere in the world. It would increase the efficiency of the film crew by hundreds of man hours, no doubt thousands over a period of time. It was a brilliant CSW. But DM didn't like the price and instead of quietly taking CG aside and asking him to try and get the costs down, DM publicly announced the guy as a saboteur in front of the entire base crew. DM was too much of a coward to have a simple friendly conversation with one of his hardest working Cine staff members. CG was mortified, felt completely horrible and he walked out of the staff meeting. When other base staff saw him, some of them would literally sneer at him. His wife stopped speaking to him.
CG didn't "cave in" and "quit" which was DM's litmus test for a suppressive by the way (if he publicly humiliated you and you caved in, you were "guilty" and an SP). CG redid his CSW for a different set of lights. The ancient dinasour kind that could be gotten used at an auction for very cheap. CG was then made to find the money for these old lights. CG found out that there was a collection of POs that had been underbilled and so there was money left that could be reallocated. CG spent hours and hours calling creditors and making sure that the bills had been acceptably paid, then he took the extra money from the POs, tallied it up and CSWd to get this reallocated to for his used lights. When he arrived in Treasury Gold he was yelled at, called names, kicked out. But he persisted. He eventually found out that the money WASN'T THERE. The Treas Sec Gold had figured out how to trick the Finance Computer system and had juggled the accounts to use the money left over from these previous POs on bills that HAD NO POs in the first place! CG was mistreated by COB and his goons and he finally just decided to route out. It took, i don't know, maybe a year, but he made it out. He then offered up his brilliant lighting ideas to professional film makers and they appreciated him, because they WANT to get great looking films made and fast. He's gotten work on many major blockbuster movies.
I can't figure out why ANYONE still in the SO is loyal to DM. He certainly isn't loyal to anybody but himself and he's an idiot.