Photo: Instagram & TikTok
Was it really an accident, though?
By Jessica Bracken — Written on May 21, 2023
There are few things more crushing than being mistreated at your job despite putting in the work. Sometimes a manager or coworker might just have it out for you through no fault of your own. One woman shared her horrible work experience on TikTok, where she was singled out and humiliated by her senior manager.
A woman discovered she was the only employee not getting a bonus when her manager displayed a spreadsheet of everyone’s bonuses on-screen during an important meeting.
Her manager put everyone's bonuses on the screen and she got a big 0.
Harriet “Lash” Pinero, who now works as a virtual assistant and social media manager, recently posted a couple of TikToks about an awful workplace experience she had in the past. When she was 21 and working as an apprentice in a firm, her senior manager apparently “really hated her.”
In a meeting with the firm’s partners for a project Pinero was working on, her manager accidentally displayed a spreadsheet containing the bonuses for everyone working at the firm. Pinero immediately noticed that all of the other employees, including her fellow apprentices, were getting hundreds of pounds in bonuses. Next to her name, however, was a zero — she was the only one not getting a bonus.
On top of that, Pinero later received an email from another manager containing a spreadsheet with the planned bonuses for everyone working on the project. She was able to see their chain of correspondence, in which management had been discussing employee bonuses, but Pinero was never mentioned.
Pinero stated that this incident played a huge role in her mental health struggles later that year, saying “This was the beginning of my breakdown.”
“I have so many more stories, but a lot of the things that happened in that workplace have bled into a lot of areas of my life, especially my work,” Pinero shared in a follow-up video. “Now I have anxiety around emails and I always think everyone I’m working with hates me.”
She explained that even talking about her experiences at her old workplace took a heavy emotional toll on her. “When I spoke about it online, which was the first time I’d spoken about the entire thing in a few years, I cried,” she said.
Commenters were outraged on Pinero’s behalf and had lots of questions about the situation.
Many commenters suggested that the spreadsheet incidents were no accident. “At this point, it was not an accident, they wanted you to know,” one comment said, to which Pinero responded, “I never considered that.” “They wanted to make you leave instead of letting you go,” another commenter said.
Other comments asked if Pinero had considered taking legal action.
When people asked for more context, Pinero shared that she had been the only Black woman in the company and that there were only three other non-white employees working there at the time, one of whom was her Chinese senior manager. Commenters proposed that she sue the company for discrimination, but Pinero explained why this wasn’t a viable option for her.
“The period is up, it’s three months for discrimination claims from when the incident happened,” she told her viewers. “There’s no feasible scenario where I would have pursued a claim because three months from when any incident happened I was still working there.” She also explained that she wouldn’t pursue a claim unless it was a “clean, easy settlement,” as going up against a “giant” law firm would be extremely difficult, time-consuming, and demanding.
The way Pinero was treated at her former job was completely unacceptable. Thankfully she’s in a better position now, but to be so blatantly singled out and mistreated would have a negative impact on anyone.
Jessica Bracken is a writer living in Davis, California. She covers entertainment and news for YourTango.