A woman has shared the moment she confronted her male coworkers over a nasty group chat she discovered where they made “locker room” comments about her mid-meeting. Honestly, the way she handled it… let’s just say she’s a better person than me.
Whitney Sharpe (@whitneyrose617), who is the Vice President of a recruiting and staffing firm, was in a meeting with a team representing a potential client when one of them accidentally clicked on the wrong tab when sharing their screen: exposing their team’s group chat instead of the product.
Of course, the messages involved comments on Whitney’s appearance and how hot she is. No, it’s not a compliment. It’s sexist and wildly unprofessional.
@whitneyrose617 It’s rough being a woman in a male dominated field 😬
Whitney saw it and decided to call it out head on and record it, too. If it were me in this situation, I would have either a) burst into tears or b) ended the call and ghosted the client.
“First of all, if we’re going to continue working together, I want to work with a woman sales representative because I don’t want to have to see locker room talk about myself when you’re sharing screens,” she said.
“I know that was a mistake, but I just don’t want to see locker room talk about myself.”
A man who presumably was the one responsible for exposing the rancid chat then frantically mumbled something like an apology (really, the only actual distinguishable word was “inexcusable”) before assuring her that her (very reasonable) request could be accomodated.
Except, after the call, Whitney revealed she received an email letting her know that actually, nope, she was going to have to keep working with men.
@whitneyrose617 How not to apologize in corporate America 101 #hrnightmare
“I understand you’d like to work with a female moving forward, however, I do not have anyone skilled enough to assist you that is a female,” the email read.
First red flag: calling women “females”. Second red flag: putting a lack of women staff down to them being not “skilled enough”, essentially implying it’s women that are the problem when they are underrepresented in male-dominated work places. Uh uh. I’m sure that’s the reason you have no women on your team. It can’t have anything to do with misogynistic work cultures and a preference for male staff, can it?
“It’s pretty much an ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ email,” Whitney said in the TikTok.
“It doesn’t feel sincere, it doesn’t come across as genuine, it doesn’t say what actions they’re taking.”
She suggested the company should have called her to apologise and then taken some kind of action like anti-sexual harassment training.
“I don’t know if they’ve learnt anything from this,” she said.
“It’s just really sad that this keeps happening.”
TikTok users commented on the videos asking why Whitney was even still considering working with the potential vendor, but in good news for us, she has since revealed that bridge is well and truly burned.
“That will no longer be happening,” she said in a third video about the saga.
She revealed that the Vice President of sales at the company finally called her, but not to actually apologise — they just wanted to ensure their sale was still going ahead. GROSS.
@whitneyrose617 The saga continues. I can’t thank you all enough for the love and support. There’s so many bad ass women out there 💖
“The only thing concrete he said he’s going to do to take action is talk to HR this afternoon. He should have spoken to HR the second he heard about [the group chat],” she said.
“I do not want to support a vendor that does not support women in business.
“It’s not going to happen.”
Let me tell ya, the way I am whooping and cheering right now… yes queen!!
