Seeing as this happened 20 years ago and she was quoting from memory, I think we can give her the benefit of the doubt. It could have also been that her view at the time was different than OP's/the person who made the deal & she recalls her opinion as "how it was".

Such things in-fact happened to me (even tho I'm a bit younger than Mayer & my career started a few years later than hers), human memory is really unreliable & a lot of times you remember your feelings & translate those to facts upon recollection even when that wasn't quite the case.