[cw: sexual harrasment] Dan Mantz and Tony Norman Sexually Harassed Me

Within the past few weeks, many former IFI/RECF employees and community members have come forward with their stories of abuse, harassment, and misconduct from the executive staff within these organizations. I have spent the past several years recovering, while at the same time being terrified to share my story for fear of retribution. Seeing all the other amazing people have the courage to make themselves heard after all this time made me feel safe enough to share my experiences, and made me confident that they won’t be ignored and swept under the rug.

I began working for IFI and its subsidiaries in 2017. It seemed like a dream job for me at the time, but I can now see how that was very much too good to be true.

My mother had passed away about a year prior. I was just about as heart broken as a person could be. She had been drinking buddies with Tony Norman - the owner, President, and CEO of IFI. They were regulars at different bars in Greenville, and he always invited her to sit at his table with him. My mom was even there when Tony physically grabbed a random server at Chilis and said, “this is gonna be my next girlfriend,” who ended up being Samantha, his now-ex wife. My mom had always pushed me to get into robotics, and said if I wanted to stay close to home, IFI would be an amazing step for me, one that would open many opportunities. I got my interview with Tony and started a week later. I was super excited because I felt my Mom would’ve been proud.

For a while everything was alright, the execs didn’t know me too well, and Tony was in China, so it was pretty quiet at the desk. I was told to “have a strong backbone” and “not get my feelings hurt” because “engineers are particular and can be mean” (Tony’s assistant told me this), specifically warning me about Bob and Tony being “absolute a**holes if things aren’t going exactly how they want”. I was freshly 21, and had never seriously drank outside of a couple parties underaged (one which was actually at Tony’s house). I wasn’t keen on drinking, but noticed that most of our events revolved around it, and as a young woman barely making rent with the measly hourly pay, I felt pressured to keep up. I didn’t have money to go clubbing or out to bars like friends my age did.

Around the Halloween party in 2017, things started to change. In my personal life, I had just moved out of an unfortunate roommate situation, and finally into an apartment on my own. My ex-roommate will be referred to as “S”. She had threatened me with a firearm to “get out”, but that wasn’t where it ended. She worked for a restaurant that IFI used for catering their lunches, and would call Jessica in HR to complain about me “calling [her] job to cuss [her] out when I’m placing [our] order,” when I never even spoke to her. Then it was a complaint that we stopped using them because “obviously this is over a grudge Morgan has over me” instead of the fact that half of the executives simply didn’t like their food, and that I was instructed to stop ordering. Since I was no longer calling her job for orders, the claims became that I was “calling her personal phone from the office daily to harass her”. Everytime this was claimed I asked HR to get with the IT department to see who I was supposedly making calls to if they thought there was any legitimacy to her claims, but they refused to do so, saying they believed me.

Back to the party, Tony’s assistant was on maternity leave so I had to handle being Tony’s personal assistant in addition to my normal duties. I was expected to show up to Tony’s house and get things ready at noon that day, and wasn’t able to leave until 3am after the party had died down. I had to stay to pay the cops working the party so that Tony wouldn’t be “bothered”. I went to pay the cops, and I was a couple hundred short so I had to go find Tony to get more money. He was talking to his friends and had an intern on his arm. He let go of her and grabbed me, smiled, and asked his friend “isn’t she pretty? I’d love her to myself but I don’t like to s**t where I eat.” I saw how he was with the intern and it disturbed me… I immediately went home to wash the Norman stench off me. The following work day, I asked to speak to Jessica about the situation. She acted very supportive of me and said she would talk to Tony about it to ensure something like that never happened again. I highly doubt the conversation ever left her office, because I almost certainly would’ve been fired that week if she did talk to him.

I remember my ex-roommate then started dating someone in HEXBUG, so she started being invited as a plus-one to all company events that I was not only invited to, but was always required to work through. I brought the topic up to HR of how she had been harassing me, and how she’s now being invited to be in closed spaces with me. I was assured she would keep her distance. At the Christmas party, while everyone was watching Star Wars, she decided to sit behind me and every couple of minutes hit my chair and say “dead mom” like a middle school bully.

On July 20, 2017, Dan Mantz, the then-president of Rack Solutions, invited both his own employees and myself to a dinner at the Flying Saucer on occasion of his last day at the company before moving to the REC Foundation to become their new CEO. I was excited to be included. While I did work for all three companies (VEX, HEXBUG, Rack Solutions), it was very rare that I received invitiations to team events for any of the three.

Leading up to this point I had had multiple one-on-one moments with Dan that at the time I thought to be completely innocent. For example, he personally explained to me the execitive portion of his job because he recognized I was interested in learning more than just being behind the front desk. We also had many chats sitting in his office when I had nothing to do at my desk, specifically regarding what I wanted to do with my future. I honestly looked up to him as a father figure.

Given the nature of what I thought was our mentor/mentee relationship, I was extremely hurt, frightened, and angered when after the dinner that evening Dan told me how he “would love to get [me] over to RECF to be his ‘sexy little assistant’. This was sexual harassment plain and simple, and it made me realize that those thoughts of his were always there, and that his interest in my future wasn’t as innocent as I initially thought when he pulled me into his office. None of my coworkers, let alone my male colleagues, were ever invited in for ‘chats about their future’, despite sharing nearly identical ages and backgrounds to myself.

I reported Dan’s inappropriate comments to Jessica in HR, but was told in no uncertain terms that “there was nothing to be done because he is no longer an IFI employee.”

When we finally moved into the new building, Larry (COO) was discussing me getting a promotion out of the front desk, and as a result I started working harder. At this point I was still not offered a salary over hourly work, and was asked to not log too many off clock hours for parties and similar. I got a call one night about how someone needed to grab alcohol from either the building to bring to Tony’s, or to grab some from someone and bring it to Tony’s for a party he was having, and if I could help. I didn’t have much to do, so I did and when I got there I walked up to Tony to see him sitting with my old roommate, S, as she’s finishing up talking about how crazy I am. She then said “I just know her mom would hate who she’s become” while looking me in the eyes. It all happened in slow motion but I thought “here it is, finally proof I’m not crazy,” but Tony started laughing. He turned and saw I was there and laughed so hard he almost cried. I left immediately.

I took PTO the next work day to collect myself because I was confused. My next day at work I sat down with Tony’s assistant and explained what happened, and told her I wanted to run it by her before going to Jessica because I didn’t want to cause trouble, just get things situated so she wouldn’t interfere with my work anymore. The day went on as normal. I came into work the next day to be pulled into the small room I had named the “Firing Office”. Since I used to be the one notarizing everyone’s exit paperwork, I knew the office all too well. While the attorney John had me there I brought up (for a second time) both instances I was sexually harassed, and was told “I’m the company’s lawyer, not yours”. I was offered $1600 in severance pay, which represented one month of my paycheck, to leave the company and not report any misconduct. Accepting this has been a huge regret of mine ever since. I was young, and that felt like a lot of money for me at the time, given that my rent and bills were less than $600 a month.

I have remained silent about my experiences, and the abuse and harrassment I recieved from Dan Mantz, Tony Norman, and IFI as a company until now because I was afraid. I was afraid of being retaliated against for telling my story. I was afraid that I would be re-opening old wounds that would only serve to further cause me harm. Most of all, I was afraid that no one would care. The posts from some of my former colleagues, including Amy Yznaga, Chuck Glick, Jay Trzaskos, and Andrew Remmers showed me that my story and experiences matter and deserve to be told.

Sincerely,
Morgan Crabtree

Edit:
1 for spelling error, 2 correction, severance was one month of my pay not two

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Morgan I am so so proud of you for coming forward. I know how hard this is and I’m here with my full support :two_hearts:

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Good to have more people posting their stories. If you are comfortable, it would be awesome if you posted it on Chief Delphi as there as been a lot of discussion there regarding these topics and I believe a link to this page has already been shared.

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I created an account specifically to thank you for sharing your story. This helps to draw a line between the culture at both organizations in a way that hadn’t been clear before. Please know that you have support here, on Chief Delphi, and across the community!

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Mr. Mantz, this is, probably, the last and that “One shot at getting things right” that Dr. Flowers was talking about.

One last chance to do the right thing and save RECF programs from collapsing. Please, don’t blow it.

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Thank you for trusting us and sharing your story with us. It truly is amazing to see how this “new” community is becoming a safe and supportive place to share these stories about VEX/IFI/RECF. I hope we can have some further discussion about RECF because, up till now, they have been trying to separate themselves from the actions of employees at IFI. It is clear through multiple accounts that the issues at IFI are also at RECF.
In a thread disscusing Dan’s official response to Amy I said:

In light of this recent information, I can complain . I am now incredibly disappointed in Mr. Mantz’s response seeing how he part of the issue. At first, when I read his response I was, naively, excited. I saw what seemed like action, which felt great compared to IFI/VEX and the shutting down + heavy moderation of the vex forums. I now see his response in a different light. I thought better of Dan and the RECF, his “transparency” and “support” in the community during these difficult times now feels disgusting.

Edit: spelling

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I haven’t been replying much in these threads as I would just be repeating what others had already said far better than what I could do, but thank you Morgan and all the other victims of IFI & RECF for coming out with your stories. I am absolutely disgusted at how even back when we were asking for trans safety at Worlds, Dan Mantz said this:

Clearly, that isn’t the case.

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When all of these things are going on, how are we supposed to trust that the REC Foundation and IFI are separate organizations with distinct beliefs when the CEO of the RECF used to be an executive at one of the IFI companies? Dan Mantz, you must step down!

Longtime community member here. What I find fascinating is not who we have heard from, but rather who we have not heard from. For so long, Karthik, Paul, and JVN were the faces of VEX. Since none of them now work there, I would have expected them to have said something throughout the entire issue. I hate the feeling I get that people I respected are staying quiet because they also have things they are ashamed of or things to hide.

Please be brave like Morgan and share your stories.

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While I understand the sentiment here, and it really does seem like every time you think it’s over there’s another person accused of misconduct, I think it’s unfair to assume a lack of saying something implies guilt. They might be victims themselves and not willing to talk about it, they might just be feeling guilt about not noticing things that are obvious in hindsight, they might have just moved on to other things and aren’t even involved enough in this stuff any more to have heard.

It’s fair to ask “this culture seems pervasive, how can we trust that just a few people leaving or a training course and some new policies will be enough to change it?” I don’t think it’s fair to say “this culture is pervasive, so let’s start going after all the people who haven’t spoken out.”

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I wouldn’t jump to this straight away. So far the only concrete thing against Dan Mantz is 1 inappropriate comment from 5 years ago. I will reserve further judgement on this till his next statement. If we begin witch hunting every person on the earth who has said something wrong, you will have to take out most of it not all of the population.

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It’s also worth pointing out that currently there are only two people on the board of directors of the RECF after the recent IFI exodus from the board, one of whom is Dan Mantz. Attempting to navigate the delicate relationship with IFI and rebuild the board with an interim CEO and only one person left on the board of directors is… not an ideal situation.

This is by no means saying that what Dan is alleged to have said is acceptable, I’m just trying to point out exactly how difficult a situation the RECF is in if you’re assuming they’re acting in good faith to prevent the program dying while making the necessary changes.

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