For the past seven years, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey posted more than a thousand entries under the pseudonym “rahodeb” on a Yahoo Finance bulletin board, praising his own company and bashing competitors like Wild Oats.
Those postings came to light this week as part of the FTC lawsuit to block Whole Foods’ takeover of Wild Oats.
While not technically illegal, it’s certainly a colossal case of bad judgment. Mackey answered the criticisms on the Whole Foods site, but even there, the defenses are weak:
- I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.
- Rahodeb’s postings therefore do not represent any official beliefs, policies, or intentions by either Whole Foods Market or by me.
The fallout from this will be interesting to watch. Will this be seen as another aspect of his contrarian, maverick style? Or is this the beginning of the end?
4 responses so far ↓
1 Flip // Jul 19, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Hiya, I came across this site by a google search of whats been going on with the whole thing. I am an employee at a Whole Foods Market and just wanted to share what we all think. Alot of people at my store who found out about this are kind of dissapointed. On one hand you have a real “cool laid back boss” like John Mackey, and then something like this makes us all feel.. played. Sure it had nothing to do with alot of us, its just business mumbo jumbo, but its bad business and bad business sucks.
I’m not sure what happens now, even though everyone at Whole Foods did receive an email with an apology. I think alot of us feel duped, and the company itsself no longer feels like a clean moral-based place to work. Thats just my two cents though. We’ll see
2 Prentiss Riddle // Jul 21, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I fear that people in media and business may be taking the wrong lessons from the anonyMackie debacle.
Recent online culture had been moving us in the direction of acceptance of a couple of perhaps contradictory principles. On the one hand, we’d been seeing more transparency and authenticity by business leaders who reveal themselves through blogs and other media (my favorite example being Flickr, where a significant chunk of the user base has a passing acquaintance with the founders’ dog). On the other hand, more people seem to be comfortable with anonymity, pseudonymity and the playful use of identity in blogs, MySpace and Second Life. Just because you sometimes appear online as a giant pink bunny rabbit doesn’t have to make me think less of you in meatspace; nor are online writers as a rule any more ashamed of using pen names than were Ben Franklin and Samuel Clemens.
Somehow, though, the mainstream press is reporting the story as though Mackey had been forging checks and flashing people in the street. I haven’t dug into the substance of Mackey’s online comments. If he was dealing in insider information, slandering his competitors or committing any of a myriad of other potential offenses, then by all means he should be called to account for it. But simply having opinions and expressing them candidly, whether in one’s own name or anonymously, should not in itself be considered a crime.
3 J M // Jul 21, 2007 at 7:24 pm
You are John Mackey aren’t you?
4 Whole Foods to Launch Their Own Magazine | The Jeff Beckham Weblog // Nov 27, 2007 at 11:24 am
[...] is partnering with Active Interest Media to launch Whole Foods Market Magazine. No word on whether rahodeb will be a featured [...]
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