Current, ex-Cardinals staffers reveal shocking details of Michael Bidwill’s toxic workplace

Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill is under fire (again) following an expose in The Athletic that exposes the toxic workplace culture in the team’s front office, especially on the non-football side.

Reporter Kalyn Kahler spoke to “over a dozen” past and present team employees and anonymously shared their stories of how bad it is to work in the NFC West organization with Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill in charge.

Cardinals employees make allegations against Michael Bidwill 

The general thrust of the story starts with a 2019 employee survey where Cardinals staff “tore Michael Bidwill to shreds” for the toxic culture he has created within the organization.

For example, “Those who spoke to The Athletic detailed how Bidwill would sometimes react strongly to what they considered minor transgressions – like a squeaky wheel on an office cart or a woman laughing too loudly in the office – contributing to a culture where many employees felt constantly on edge.”

Also, “Former employees also described unwritten policies about how women were to dress, interact with male football staffers and players, and where they could and couldn’t go in the building.”

Additionally, the organization had no HR director as recently as 2021, no “fully-staffed HR department” until 2022, and even today there is currently still a “lack of a robust human resources department.”

Most of the piece, though, is dedicated to the employees sharing stories of how they would avoid Bidwill and his mood swings/temper at all costs, keep their voices down any time he was around, and how the Cardinals owner literally built a wall in the offices to keep the female non-football staff from chatting with the players and coaches who came through.

This isn’t the first time Michael Bidwill has faced accusations of creating a toxic workplace culture.

In late 2019, outgoing COO Ron Minegar delivered a letter to Bidwill stating, “A majority of our employees are working in fear.”

And in a defamation lawsuit brought by former team executive Terry McDonough leveled many of these same accusations and accused the Cardinals owner of using “burner phones” to communicate with suspended general manager Steve Keim.

As of Thursday afternoon, neither the Cardinals nor the NFL has responded to any of the allegations in the article yet.