An employee of the US company Cloudflare records her emotional dismissal interview and goes viral on Tiktok. The main topic of discussion is how she will be fired and what the CEO will say about it later.
Another quick sip from the beverage can and then get ready for the virtual meeting. The call is coming. Brittany Pietsch knows this conversation will get her fired.
Until the phone call, Pietsch was employed by the internet security company Cloudflare. She noticed that many colleagues had already been invited to 15-minute meetings throughout the day. A friend of mine has already been fired. That’s why Pietsch decided to secretly record the entire conversation and is now going viral on the Internet under the hashtag “girl gets fired from her job”. Reposts of the video on “X” have already been clicked millions of times.
Pietsch wants to know the reason for the dismissal
“I was fired by two people I didn’t know,” Pietsch writes at the beginning of the video, in which only she can be seen. “A woman from HR and a manager I had never heard of.” These two then explain to Pietsch that she did not meet performance expectations for the past year and that the company had therefore decided to part ways with her.
Pietsch then fights for her job: “After all, what did I have to lose?” she writes. So she counters the two company representatives: She only started a few months ago, but she already knows her customers and the products well and was close to signing a contract. She also argues that the feedback from her direct supervisor was always positive. “I don’t agree that just because I haven’t signed a contract yet, I haven’t met my performance expectations,” she says.
She comes back to it again and again during the ten-minute conversation and wants to know why exactly she is being fired. Because neither the HR manager nor the managing director can provide her with a satisfactory explanation.
Pietsch also wants to know why it’s not her direct supervisor who is having this conversation and becomes emotional: “It must be easy for you to have these ten to fifteen minute meetings. Telling someone that they’re fired is ruining their whole life and that without explanation,” says Pietsch, close to tears. “This is traumatizing for these people, if you can imagine.”
Both repeat again and again that they understand what Pietsch is saying and will take this feedback into account. But in the end they end with the sentence: “I don’t think there’s anything we can say in this moment or today that will change how you feel, Brittany,” says the HR woman.
Discussion about fair termination on Tiktok
Pietsch’s video has now sparked a debate on the Internet about what correct behavior in the workplace should look like and how companies can fairly terminate their employees. Even Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince felt compelled to post on “X”. “It’s painful for me to watch this video,” he writes, admitting that the call could have been handled better. In total, around 40 of 1,500 sales employees were recently laid off.
Many users are now supporting Pietsch in this. It was right to make the nature of the termination public and to defend yourself. They believe that honesty and fairness must be demanded from management.
This article appeared first which, like stern, is part of RTL Germany.
Source: Stern
