The Yoga Store Murder (11 page)

So on December 28, 2009, Brittany gave him one. “I went home for Xmas and my grandmother is sick and in the hospital. She had a heart attack yesterday. Instead of flying back tonight, I am leaving Wednesday morning,” she texted from Washington—D.C., not Seattle. A month later, she had to cancel again, this time using the shifting schedule of a VIP guest at the Willard as her excuse. “I’ve got the Jonas Brothers coming on late now today at 7 instead of 3, so once again will have to reschedule,” she wrote the stylist.

“OK, no prob,” the stylist wrote back.

Brittany looked into buying a boutique condo or loft in downtown Washington, some going for close to a half million dollars. “I just wish I was rich so I could be like ‘I’ll take one of those and two of those!’” she wrote to a friend who worked at a nearby hotel. “I’m going to have to get a second job.”

Brittany struggled to find a steady boyfriend to replace the dentist, but certainly didn’t lack for companionship. On a trip to Miami with a friend, she met a guy from the United Arab Emirates. “When am I going to see you again?” Brittany wrote afterward. “I’m thinking Dubai in two weeks. What’s your work schedule like?”

“Naw, that’s not going to work,” he wrote back, suggesting she visit him after relatives cleared out and an upcoming religious observation concluded. “I have my parents there the exact same time. How about end of September? That would be a good time because Ramadan is coming in three weeks, so the entire country will be shut down for that month.”

Brittany proposed they stay in touch. “You enjoy the time you have with the fam.”

In Washington, Brittany carried on a longtime casual relationship with a Democratic Party operative that seemed to involve just two features—him telling her when he’d be appearing on TV and the two of them getting together for sex. Brittany seemed to always squeeze in time, often on a moment’s notice. Only a few things got in the way. “Baby, I need to get my nails done,” Brittany wrote him in the summer of 2009. “If I cancel they’ll charge me. I can do tomorrow at lunch.”

*

With her family scattered in different states, Brittany kept in touch with them with a running stream of wisecracks and well-wishing. But everything wasn’t perfect between the siblings. After returning from a family gathering in Seattle, Brittany learned that her sister Heather was accusing her of swiping $300 cash out of her purse.

Brittany fired off a quick missive. “I have never done anything to you to give you the impression that I would ever steal from you, especially money. Anytime I’ve ever needed it, I’ve always asked you straight up,” she wrote. “At least have the decency and respect to ask me yourself, instead of going around telling people I stole money from you!”

“If you didn’t take it,” her sister wrote back, “then sorry for accusing you. I don’t know what to think!”

“At this point I can care less you didn’t know what to think. What have I ever done to make you think I would steal from you?” Brittany replied. “You don’t just accuse someone of doing something and throw false allegations out there before even speaking to them.”

The two sisters soon seemed to patch things up, returning to concern over each other’s lives.

*

Away from work, away from happy hours with friends, Brittany would fall into social isolation. She’d go through bouts of poor concentration, of trouble sleeping. In the spring of 2010, Brittany took a vacation but stayed in town. “At the gym twice a day,” she texted to a friend.

It was high-octane stuff: kickboxing classes, ab classes, “Boot Camp” classes. And it seemed to help revive the great athlete that Brittany had been. She started thinking about moving on to a new career—as a personal trainer, perhaps even owning a gym. And Brittany knew a place she thought might help her get there.

Of all the stores in America, the ones considered the most successful generally fall into two camps: luxury retailers, like Tiffany jewelers, or volume ones, like Costco. Rarely mentioned but squarely in the first camp is lululemon athletica, which in 2011 ranked fourth highest in sales per square foot of floor space—trailing only Apple, Tiffany, and Coach, according to the research firm RetailSails. Lululemon owed its quiet success to its limited but intensely loyal set of customers.

To customers, lululemon hit all the right buttons. The store’s roots were in yoga, offering stylish tights and tops made of moisture-wicking fabric, chafe-resistant seams, and hidden pockets for cards and keys. But the stores sold plenty of other workout gear as well, and its vibe wasn’t completely Zen and serenity. They targeted customers with high-paced lives, women who wanted to succeed on all fronts—as professionals, as mothers, as people.

Lululemon espoused their ethos in a thirty-one-part manifesto printed on its shopping bags, water bottles, and various merchandise. Number 11: “The world is changing at such a rapid rate that waiting to implement changes will leave you 2 steps behind. DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW!” Number 25: “Nature wants us to be mediocre because we have a greater chance to survive and reproduce. Mediocrity is as close to the bottom as it is to the top, and will give you a lousy life.”

Central to the company’s success were its saleswomen, called “educators,” whose mission it was to teach customers, called “guests,” about the technical specifications and design elements of the apparel, and allow them to decide what to buy. The ideal educators were fit and high-achieving women themselves; guests wanted to see themselves reflected when they spoke with them.

So when Brittany first met the manager of lululemon athletica’s store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown section, the manager saw a seemingly perfect employee. Brittany knew style. She knew high-end athletics. She had spent more than three years disarming the demanding guests of a luxury hotel. And with her petite but chiseled frame, Brittany clearly looked the part. She started the same day she filled out her application.

When she completed the forms, Brittany created a fictitious paper trail in keeping with this persona, indicating not only that she’d graduated from Stony Brook but that she’d posted a 3.4 GPA while there (considerably higher than her real one of 1.98). Brittany reported that she’d been making $55,000 a year at the Willard, quite a bit more than the lululemon job, which started at $11 an hour. With commissions, that could translate to about $30,000 a year. Brittany wrote that a desire for a “career change” was what prompted her to leave the Willard.

As she made the transition, a friend from high school caught up with her over the phone. Brittany was as encouraging as ever: “I’m so happy that you’re doing well.” Brittany told her friend that leaving the Willard reflected her attempts to appreciate life more. She talked about trying to get to Haiti to help the earthquake survivors. “Life is too short to miss opportunities,” Brittany said, sounding content and happy, and signed off as always: “I miss you and I love you.”

Brittany was a natural on the sales floor—spirited, energetic, fun to be around. Like her colleagues, she enjoyed benefits that for an hourly retail job were good. Lulu paid for health-care insurance, yoga classes, and fitness-club visits, and offered its employees the pricey merchandise at a steep discount—good news, since employees were expected to wear the form-fitting garb not just to work, but also out to yoga classes and fitness clubs, talking up its benefits as part of lulu’s brilliant, grassroots marketing strategies. The Georgetown store also sent Brittany to help organize Sunday sessions of “Beach Bums & Bellinis” at the well-known W Washington hotel. For $39, participants got a workout followed by brunch overlooking the White House.

Lulu could be an unusual place to work—one that reflected the same Zen-to-attain message to its employees as it did to customers. Employees read a handbook called
pramana
, a Sanskrit term used for “obtaining knowledge,” and were expected to follow
asteya
, another Sanskrit term used for “not stealing and not coveting.” They were encouraged to watch DVDs by self-help guru Brian Tracy, be part of a mission to “elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness,” and publically document their personal one-year, five-year, and ten-year goals for their lives and careers.

Brittany tried to lock in on becoming a personal trainer and opening her own gym. In December 2010, at her brother Jay’s wedding, she spoke to her brother Chris about how during her childhood, she’d thought she was fat and hated the way people looked at her. Being a personal trainer was a way she could help people. To Chris, this was welcome news. He’d long felt Brittany lacked professional focus.

Meanwhile, back at the Georgetown store, employees were reporting incidents of missing cash, of money taken from wallets in the back room and registers coming up short. Brittany said that she, too, was missing money. Still, the store manager grew suspicious—no one ever accused Brittany of stealing, but she had worked all the shifts reporting problems.

It was around this time that lululemon ran its nationwide, employees-only “Shop Night,” where workers could purchase apparel at 70 percent off, an even steeper discount than normal. To ward off depletion of inventory, the company set purchase limits at $1,000. At the Georgetown store, Brittany asked the manager on duty if she could go over the limit. The manager agreed, but would later say she thought Brittany was talking about a relatively minor amount. Yet Brittany more than doubled the purchase limit, racking up $2,196 worth of purchases—which, with the discount, cost her only $659.

The manager felt her goodwill had been taken advantage of. And her suspicions about Brittany only grew. By now, she more strongly suspected Brittany of the thefts. On December 29, 2010, she brought Brittany in for a meeting and asked her about going over the $1,000 “Shop Night” limit. Brittany questioned why the rules were suddenly so strict. The manager fired her on the spot, citing “discount abuse” on her termination letter.

For Brittany, it was a big blow. Lululemon wasn’t just a paycheck; it was a pathway to success—a ticket into high-end health clubs, a way to make valuable connections—that could make up for stumbles in her life and match the accomplishments of those around her. Brittany called a friend who also worked at lulu, and learned workers at other stores had likely gone over the limit, too. She complained and a regional manager got involved.

The company’s handling of her firing was, to some extent, a product of its success. Just like other fast-growth retailers, lulu had expanded quickly and profitably by granting autonomy to the store managers. It made for creative and energetic places to work. But the fast growth meant the company didn’t always have time-tested systems in place. In this case, the company didn’t follow a structured process for handling the trickiest of personnel matters—suspecting thievery but lacking proof—and had carried out a termination citing different reasons, one that had created more problems than it solved.

The company’s regional office launched an internal investigation. It turned out that across North America, twenty-seven other lululemon workers had topped the $1,000 limit on the end-of-year discounts. Brittany talked to friends about hiring a lawyer. It was never clear if she told people at lululemon that she was considering legal action, but perhaps she didn’t have to—given the issues with other employees from “Shop Night,” and given lululemon’s relentless attention to its corporate image.

The store manager’s decision was overturned. Within two weeks, Brittany met with a regional manager who told her she would be reinstated, and gave her a choice of stores to work at. But rather than appreciate the company’s gesture, Brittany groused about how the whole thing had played out in texts to another lulu worker: “It totally went how I expected and I swear the apology wasn’t even genuine!”

“Jeeze! I’m so sorry! Are you ok? What do you want to do?”

“I will prolly end up at Bethesda, but haven’t fully made up my mind yet . . . It’s definitely unfortunate, but now all I can do is try and make the best of it!”

Brittany had a couple more weeks off, and fell back on the enjoyable parts in her life—friends, family, and fitness. “Today, just doing the relaxing thing. Massage, manicure, then dinner w/the girls,” she texted to a friend, laying out weekend plans that included watching her beloved Seattle Seahawks. “Tomorrow, yoga in the A.M. then football!!!!! Hopefully the Seahawks will kick some Bears Ass :)”

Brittany also reconnected with a U.S. Secret Service agent whom she’d dated six months earlier, joking with him about how she’d been playing with one of her nephews and her cell phone fell into a sewer. “Ahh the joys of kids,” the agent replied. The two had lunch the next day and hung out at Brittany’s place.

She was also hitting trendy bars and dance clubs with friends, and used the time to hang out with her young relatives. Brittany and her three sisters looked out for each other—texting and calling during snowstorms to make sure everyone made it home from work safely. Brittany organized a thirtieth birthday dinner for her sister Marissa.

The next morning, she heard by text from her mother in Washington State. “Good morning sweetie, How are you this morning? Did you go out to dinner yesterday for Missy’s Birthday? I’m glad all of you have each other there, and you are there with the little people. Have a wonderful day. I love you very much, Mom.”

Brittany responded, saying they’d all gone to the Carlyle. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been there with us too. Enjoy the Rest of your Day. Love You!”

Out in Washington, Brittany’s parents talked proudly about their children. “All the kids are doing great,” Earl Norwood told his friend Don Brown.

On January 18, 2011, Brittany met with Rachel Oertli, manager of the Bethesda lululemon athletica store. It couldn’t have been an entirely comfortable talk. Several months earlier, she’d applied for a management job at Rachel’s store—hoping that her years at the Willard would make up for her lack of retail experience—but Rachel had turned her down. Still, for Brittany, the new meeting went well, and she sent a text to one of her future coworkers: “You have such a solid team. I know it’ll be a great experience.”