If you thought your nightmare of a boss was unhinged, please allow me the pleasure of showing you the LinkedIn message this woman received from her ex-boss, who she hadn’t even worked with for several years. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s worse.
Picture this: you’re laying in bed at night, close to 11pm, when you get a notification: a message from an old boss, someone you interned for five years ago in a temporary three month gig and never kept in contact with.
If it was me, I probably wouldn’t have even opened the message until the next day, if ever. But TikTok user Jessica (@jessalbotra) did, and it turned out to be a pretty boring message. At least, until she left it on read.
“Hi Jess, I hope you’re doing well — Happy New Year!” the message read. Boring, as predicted.
“I see you’re thriving and working at Google now, and that’s amazing. I’m very proud of you and will always remember the humble early days of us working at [redacted]. I am now working as a Marketing Manager for the last few years. I’d love to catch up over a phone call soon and see how you’re doing! Let me know.”
@jessalbotra you 👏🏼 don’t 👏🏼 owe 👏🏼 anyone 👏🏼anything 👏🏼 #career #careeradvice #careertok #linkedin #greenscreensticker
Okay, if I got this, there’s no way I’d respond. Catch up over the phone?? With a boss I was never close to??? Who I haven’t spoken to in years??? It screams ulterior motive.
Naturally, Jess ignored it. She received a similar message in her Facebook message requests, which she didn’t accept.
Then, a few weeks later, she received another message from her ex-boss on LinkedIn. And this one was not at all normal.
Sent at 4am (!!!), the message read: “Wow, it’s a shame to think that you’ve turned into the kind of person that you have. I always detected a selfish and opportunistic side when you interned for me at [redacted] back in 2017, but for you to actually ignore a message from a former superior is beyond low.”
Excuuuuuuuse me? Her “superior”??? I’m gonna need a forklift to pick my jaw up off the ground right now.
“I wasn’t messaging to beg for anything, I was simply congratulating you and you’ve ignored me,” the message continued. Yes, there’s more.
“I hope you’re part of the Google layoffs and may karma treat you deservingly both personally and professionally.”
All because of a message being left on read. Wow.
But guess what, the tea doesn’t end there.
After Jess’ TikTok blew up, people tracked down the boss’ LinkedIn and Instagram, resulting in a flurry of messages where people sent her the TikTok.
Jess revealed the boss then claimed she was hacked, and that the message sent to Jess was not from her.
@jessalbotra Replying to @Belllll #greenscreensticker
“My LinkedIn was recently hacked and I’ve since just retrieved it. I was horrified to see that this fraud artist was sending a series of harassing and unprofessional messages to former colleagues,” a screenshot of the boss’ Instagram story read.
“Unfortunately, one of these has now sadly gone viral on Reddit and TikTok, as everyone thinks this was the real me.
“The first message sent to the recipient in question was me, the next was after the hack. If you hear anything negative about my reputation, please ignore.”
Given the messages were sent weeks apart, there could be some merit to claims of hacking. Except Jess suggested the excuse was BS because she saw her posting normally to her LinkedIn until hours before the viral TikTok was posted.
“They’re continuing to take any blame off of themselves, they aren’t owning their words,” Jess said in an update video.
“If this person had just come to me and said ‘You know what, that was really shitty of me to say and I apologise, I was in a bad place’, whatever the reason was. I’m generally a very empathetic and understanding person, I probably would have taken my video down.”
But wait, there’s MORE.
A TikTok user called Alyssa claimed she spoke to the boss on Instagram before the statement was posted. In screenshots provided to Jess, the DMs admit to sending nasty messages despite the hacking claims.
@jessalbotra Replying to @Alyssa #greenscreensticker
“Hi Alyssa, what makes you think what I said was awful?” a message in the screenshot reads.
“Jess started the ignorance by not replying. I was simply stating my views.”
Another messages calls Jess “immature” and accuses her of “trying to destroy my reputation”.
The name of the sender is blacked out to protect the boss’ privacy, but unfortunately that also means we can’t fully confirm if the convo was real.
It seems Jess has verified it herself, though. And if so, well, that’s certainly a different story to what the IG Story claimed.
I’m eagerly awaiting the next update.
