Photo: nicoleybridget3/TikTok
They brought a whole other meaning to the "For You Page."
By Kurtis Condra — Written on Aug 17, 2022
A Minnesota mother is telling her story of how a simple TikTok she made got her fired after one of her coworkers found it on the platform and sent it to their boss.
One thing they didn't realize, however, was that their reasons were firing her were inaccurate.
The mom was fired after the school misunderstood a TikTok hashtag.
Speaking to the New York Post, Nicole Johnson, the creator of the videos, said was working as a special education paraprofessional at a Minnesota school and that her troubles began when she posted the video of herself on the 14th of May drinking her Starbucks with a silly caption.
"Me telling my coworkers there is no way I can come in early cause I have kids but yet I arrive with a Starbucks daily," the caption read.
Five days later, and with only two weeks remaining in the school year, Johnson said she was fired from her job.
"I put this TikTok out there and didn't like think anyone was gonna do anything with it," Johnson said in a follow-up TikTok she posted to her page.
She said she was called into a meeting with human resource administrators who printed out a photograph of her TikTok on someone's phone, but Johnson immediately recognized the phone belonged to her 60-year-old coworker.
"I didn't think I could get fired because I didn't think it was unprofessional. It doesn't swear, it's not negative, it's not harassing, it's literally just me being like 'I can't come into work early, but I have a Starbucks.'"
Johnson clarified that she was never late for work when she did show up with coffee but was unable to arrive early because she has kids of her own.
The administrators claim Johnson was 'disrespectful' to her coworkers because of the hashtag 'FYP.'
The acronym "FYP" is used across TikTok to mean "For You page," however the administrators of the school claim that Johnson's use of "FYP" meant "F you people," and this was directed toward her coworkers.
Before all this, she was placed on administrative leave after the school found previous TikToks she made in November.
Those previous videos demanded justice for her niece, who suffered a serious brain injury ten years ago as an infant while in the care of a man who was not named.
The man moved to the same town Johnson was in and began working in the same field as her at a different building in the same school district, and when school administrators saw the videos, they deemed them to be harassment of a coworker, and she was placed on leave.
When she returned, Johson said emails from the administrators complained about her attendance, and the Starbucks TikTok was a "slap in the face" to her coworkers, as human resources claim.
Johnson said the hardest thing after being fired is missing the students she worked with.
"I’ll never get to say goodbye to the students, though, they’ll think I just left them,” she said.
Kurtis Condra covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics for YourTango. He is also a poet based in San Francisco, California. You can keep up with his poetic journey on Instagram.