Brittany Pietsch from Atlanta, Georgia, recorded herself being laid off from US IT company Cloudflare and posted the video to TikTok where it has since gone viral.
In the video, Pietsch appears to be given little to no reason by two human resources employees as to why she is being laid off.
The video posted on January 12 has since racked up over 1.5 million views and even the CEO of Cloudflare Matthew Prince has responded to it on X (Twitter).
"The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldnt be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they werent performing," he said.
Pietsch told Newsflare: "All day my peers started receiving 10-minute meetings from a random director outside of our organisation. A close coworker friend of mine received the invite 30 minutes before me.
"After her meeting, she called me in tears and said they let her go but could not give any reasons why and blamed her performance yet could not say what that performance was.
"That was about 10 minutes before my scheduled call. I called my dad in a panic asking for his advice on what I should do. He told me to stay calm, strong, and understand why. Anxiety was consuming me as the call started.
"When the director man got on the call, he didnt even introduce himself and immediately started reading off a script. I knew I wasnt going to listen to the script he was reading off for me.
"I wasnt going to (for lack of a more eloquent phrase) bend over and take it from this corporate bulls***. My objective was not to keep my job, my objective was to get them to exactly tell me why I was being let go.
"I was not going to let them gaslight me into saying it was performance-based. They admitted to not ever speaking to my direct manager about my performance - so it was confirmed for me then that this was 100 percent a mass layoff they were trying to disguise as a lack of performance."
Viewers on TikTok were quick to voice their opinions. One said: "Take them to court, they cannot fire you without reason. You should be a lawyer! Very well spoken."
Another commented: "HR pro here. Let me just say that it is HRs JOB to have all of the details to explain why this happened if it is truly performance-related."
"I dont know how HR people live with themselves," said someone else.
This footage is being managed exclusively by Newsflare. To license this video email [email protected] or call: +44 (0) 203 937 6280
