Welcome back to season two of the corporate gossip podcast. You guys, we spend so much time researching

each of these episodes. So thank you for being patient as we got season two ready. If you want to

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And a few of the episodes we included this season were suggested by our listeners. So if you have any ideas of episodes you think we should do or if you have thoughts on any of the episodes we do, you know, make sure to send us an email Becca at night toast.com or send us a voice note in the email and maybe we'll play it on the

podcast. Thanks, guys. Hope you like this episode.

On the shores of Lake Washington in southeast Seattle lies a big humming factory. And I mean big. A hundred thousand square meters big enough to fit 19 football fields. There's good reason it's so ginormous. Inside, thousands of America's brightest engineers are building Boeing's shiny new aircraft, the 737 max. Standing above the production line is

senior manager, Ed Pearson, a 30-year Navy veteran. Pearson looks as intimidating as his credentials

imply. His serious expressions are only amplified by his shaved head, penetrating eyes, and pronounced jawline.

He's not the kind of manager you want to piss off. He has high standards. And he felt that Boeing,

and more importantly the passengers that would eventually buckle into the planes that sat on this

factory floor, deserve no less, which is why on a hot

July day in Renton, Washington, Pearson got scared. Over the past few months, he noticed that

production was getting kind of sloppy. Machinists were missing parts they needed to do their

job, so work just wouldn't get done. And then the next shift would arrive and

their work depended on the first shift's work and it just began to pile up undone. But managers

kept pushing the planes to the next position on the factory floor. When Pearson's team voiced their

concern to Boeing's execs, the exec solution was to ask the workers to put in more hours.

Getting the 737 max out on time was critical to Boeing's bottom line, they said. There was no

room for slowdowns. Pearson watched as the factory production began to deteriorate. His team was fatigued and frustrated, and it didn't seem like Boeing's leadership understood how dire the consequences could be.

So that night, Pearson opened up his laptop and wrote a letter to Boeing's top leadership.

It's been edited here for brevity and read by an actor.

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