Now, I don't remember the dates that these things happened, as I wasn't paying attention really at the time, but I remember knowing things were beginning to go wrong by the time Queen Elizabeth II died on 8th September. Melanie was a lot more in our team chats, and by this time she and Zac had fired a long-standing member of the team, who actually had been causing a lot of problems due to her prickly nature. But that member of staff was very close to Zac, and I think the decision did not sit easy with him.
He was also upsetting other members of the team in one way or another that I am not completely clear on. I know part of it was to do with him wanting to cut people's hours. But this is all very odd, as he never asked me, and I outright wanted to cut my hours, and was offering to do so all the time! He also wasn't open to new ideas, or to giving staff leeway to use their own initiative. Alledgedly. I don't know - I never had any problems with him, so this is all second-hand.
The other thing that happened was that the Thrive Membership Program that was due to run in September was cancelled at short notice. Luckily, as it turned out.
Then on 14th September, Melanie and Iva had a meeting with Zac, where he was given some sort of ultimatum, and instead he decided to leave. On the 15th September, we had a team meeting where we were told of what had happened, and where people were discussing how they could pick up the slack.
I remember this well, because everyone was talking about all the skills and abilities they had, and the roles they could take on, and I felt really adrift and at sea, because I had no particular skills and abilities. I remember saying that - and adding "but I am a fast learner, a hard worker, and enthusiastic and loyal". Words that haunt me.
We heard Mel's story of what had happened and according to her, he was slowly driving MTE into the ground. He was trying to cut hours to better fund his own lifestyle, including Teslas for him and Ivy, and was stopping Melanie herself from following her intuition. He refused to let her take over the reins and so she sacked him.
Ivy was originally possibly going to stay on (although of course it was a tricky position for her to be in, as Zac's girlfriend), but then Heather (IIRC) found some recurring payments to an external source. These turned out to be to a graphic designer.
Mel's explanation of this is that Ivy had contacted this graphic designer pretending to be Mel, and had used her to do the designs that she then pretended were coming from her. She added in photographs and general chit chat to this lady about her (Mel's) holidays and life etc - so the woman truly believed it was Mel she was talking to.
We were then shown a letter from Ivy, where she confessed to this graphic designer that she had been pretending to be Mel all along, and had used her to make herself look good.
Of course, we were all in shock and horrified that Ivy would do such a thing. Not only was it a betrayal of Mel as an employer, but it was also a huge betrayal of Mel as her future mother-in-law, and Mel repeatedly wailed about how she had loved her like a daughter.
Unsurprisingly, Ivy left at this point.
It has only been as things have unfolded that we began to doubt this story.
The first thing that didn't add up was that there were varous points in the coming months where Zac and Ivy were threatening Melanie with court. Each time, we would point out that she should threaten them right back with making the contents of Ivy's letter public, and with prosecuting her for impersonating Melanie.
Every time she would say, 'oh, I'm keeping that in my back pocket.' It stayed in that back pocket, however bad the threts from Zac became.
The other thing to bear in mind is that Melanie has all of us act as her at various times. Almost every announcement made on the Forum (unless it is a sales pitch) is made by a member of the team (usually Violet initially, latterly usually me). The emails that go out from Melanie are written by a member of staff - again, this was me by the time Zac left. If you have been contacted by 'Melanie' asking you to become a member of the moderator team, or to give a testimony, it will usually have been Iva. This did become less prevalent after Zac left, as Melanie took over contacting people herself. for testimonies, and I became the person who would reach out to prospective moderators.
There even used to be a 'Melanie's voice' training, to enable people to sound like her.
So I do wonder if Ivy was actually acting under Melanie's instructions, at least initially, and if she was told to write that letter as a condition of her leaving? This is purely conjecture on my part, but this was also the start of Melanie's later narrative that Ivy had been the power behind the throne and had been leading Zac into taking money out of the company.
After all, given the way she treated her own son, blaming the woman she 'loved like a daughter' (when she decided she wanted him back in her life) is certainly not out of character.
On 30th September Zac posted in the MTE Team Skype chat that he was leaving, and thanked everyone for all they had done, said how sad he was to go etc. Only Lily had the inclination or the bollocks to 'heart' his post. Then Melanie came on and laid into him, basically shutting him down and accusing him of all sorts. She has since removed those posts, so I can't say for sure what they said, but Zac saw he was flogging a dead horse and that was the last we saw of him.
As a result of all this, Zac is now No Contact with his mother. But this is not something she will ever mention in public, even though her blog endlessly trumpets how she healed herself, her son and their relationship following their first estrangement in his late teens.
None of us understood that with his departure we lost the final brake on Mel's humungous ego-charge into abuse, money-grabbing and fakery. The signs were there right from this point onwards, but most of us didn't see them - couldn't see them due to our own enmeshment.
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