06-30-2020
Earlier this month, Greg Glassman resigned as chief executive of CrossFit due to his public comments about George Floyd. A number of people have expressed surprise that his departure was not prompted by sexual harassment. According to a dozen former employees and patrons (athletes), the CrossFit management culture was rife with overt sexual and otherwise vulgar talk about women. Glassman in particular is said to have bragged about his own sexual escapades, verbally demeaned female colleagues, pulled at their clothes to view cleavage, aimed his phone’s camera to photograph their breasts, and pressured them to consider sharing living space with him during work travel. Glassman and other male colleagues purportedly discussed which colleagues and athletes they did and did not want to have sex with, and the Wi-Fi password at a company office in San Diego was a “sexist obscenity” according to former employees.
The former employees said that reporting the behavior was not an option because the company has not had a human resources manager since 2013, Glassman is the sole owner, and the most powerful female at the company is his sister, Kathy Glassman. Lauren Jenai, Glassman’s ex-wife and co-founder of CrossFit, confirmed that the employees and athletes accurately described the corporate atmosphere while she worked there as sexist, degrading, and punitive to those who speak out about the atmosphere. Jenai also confirmed that Glassman entered into a settlement with a former employee to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Glassman and Jenai created CrossFit in 2000. The company is privately held and currently employs 72 people full-time, down from 137 two years ago. According to “Morning Chalk Up,” a newsletter that covers the CrossFit community, as of the beginning of 2020, there were more than 14,000 CrossFit affiliate gyms, each of which pays an annual fee of $3000. After Glassman’s inflammatory tweet and comments about George Floyd, Reebok announced that it would not renew its CrossFit deal. Morning Chalk Up also reported that more than 1,200 of the affiliates had plans to disassociate themselves from the CrossFit brand.