On X, Conservative commentator Candace Owens called Pietsch "young and stupid" after her video went viral: "Now any company that googles Brittany Pietsch will come across this video of her secretly recording the company she was employed at to expose them for doing their job. Unbelievably shortsighted."
Candace Owens is also known for her flippant suggestion that 'Hitler was trying to make Germany great again'. If the best source the BBC can come up with for the alternative POV is a nazi-adjacent social media troll, perhaps they should reconsider their cognitive biases.
Credibility matters. If someone is equivocating genocide with “making Germany great again”, it deserves to be pointed out and their testimony taken with a huge grain of salt.
Go read Götz Ali's Hitler's Beneficiaries, which lays out in exhaustive detail the combination of financial chicanery and outright theft that was used to channel wealth toward his political base.
While the risk is obvious, what is the alternative ?
You can go down as a number on the spreadsheet, or you can show everyone else they are also numbers on a spreadsheet.
Her behaviour is a first step towards a different workplace. The effectiveness is questionable, but what more can a single, non organized individual can do ?
Some people really thrive in the cage and would prefer to not acknowledge it's existence. That's what this entire thing really boils down to.
No one's saying she did something immoral. Instead the implication is that she broke some social code. Because of course we're all operating on the assumption that corporations hold the power and we should be grateful that they take pity on us to exploit us at all.
No. Anyone can form a superficially cogent argument when they don't need to defend it. This one is fallacious because it assumes its conclusion (hard working managers doing their jobs, rather than the reality of being unable to articulate what expectations the laid-off employee failed to meet).
Further, engaging with bad actors (who are generally cynics rather than idiots) normalizes their standing as commentators/public figures, and gives them opportunity to push shitty ideas into public discourse. They're PR professionals who understand how to exploit the dynamics of social media very well and imho to the general detriment.
It’s not a cogent point but a distraction: as an authoritarian, Owens is naturally predisposed to assuming the company is in the right but a more accurate framing recognizes that this was not HR doing their jobs but HR lying about someone to make it sound like they were being fired for cause. Doing their jobs would have been “we’re doing a layoff, here are the terms of your severance”, and recognizing that Owens is an unreliable source is important for not letting her framing shape the discussion.
He wanted to make Germany great insofar as greatness means him being in power, his hatred manifest in murder, wealth and rights incredibly unequally distributed and hundreds of millions living as an underclass.
It takes a very warped view of greatness to believe it.
This young lady may or may not have destroyed her career prospects. I have no idea.
But, if the outcome is that all employers need to think about whether their firings/layoffs are broadcast for everyone to see and critique, I’d say that she made the world a little bit better :)
She has definitely damaged herself professionally.
It was a very naive thing to do. I'm actually surprised that instead of laying her off they didn't just sack her, but maybe there was a delay between the meeting and her releasing it.
She got a few likes on social media though, so that's good.
Did she make the word a better place, or a worse one?
In my opinion, after seeing this video, any HR department will simply say “you are being laid off” and give no other information. I imagine this could only reduce the amount of information that an HR dept would give.
That’s better than lying to people claiming that it’s their fault. Losing a job is traumatic and anyone who isn’t supremely self-confident is going to be hurt by those false claims. We’re not going to get executive accountability easily but it’s still better if HR doesn’t make a bad situation worse trying to coddle senior management’s egos.
That was entirely her goal. She wanted the company to admit that she was just being laid off for no reason. Instead they tried to make her feel like it was her bad performance. That need to end.
As a millennial, why does every aspect of our life have to be so performative? People are mistaking attention seeking for "transparency". If you spend every waking of your moment on camera or making everyone around you paranoid about being on camera, no one in your life including yourself is every going to be genuine.
Besides, it's a dumb thing to do. Depending on the state you or the HR person is in you could be violating 2-party consent laws.
The thing that rubbed me the wrong way is that @legitster most likely knew this, and this why they said, "could be violating ..." and then the whole comment comes off like a pro-corporate scare post to not call out shitty tactics. It is disingenuous. It is shallow and dismissive to call what she did the act of a performative millennial.
By the point this article came up, it was widely known for those paying attention that Pietsch committed no crimes in recording this.
You knew what state the other people on the call were in? Were their names even revealed? Even if they were, why would you assume others are as invested in this story that they’d seek out that info?
i dont understand the first sentence you wrote at all
what state were the other two callers in? you also wrote all layoffs should be recorded knowing that it would violate law in some states. this sounds pretty disingenuous. by "paying attention" you mean someone highly invested in this like you are, with the same weirdo aggro activist tone
Maybe every interaction with HR should be recorded, but almost none of them should be posted to TikTok. That eliminates anonymity, and increases the chance of bias for future employers.
As Gen X, I don't think many young people can help it at this point. I don't use social media because I hate the way it invades my thoughts and mediates my experiences into a judgement of post worthiness.
If you grew up filming the most trivial aspects of your life it should not be a surprise if you feel the need to film something as important as losing a job.
Personally, it wouldn't even occur to me to film such a thing let alone to post it online. I would have assumed it would be illegal to film without the other side having a clue you are filming.
If I grew up filming literally everything though the idea of it being illegal I am sure would sound ridiculous and not even enter my mind. I am sure the thought process didn't go beyond this being some potentially really good "content".
The strangest thing to me is I have been let go from a job before. It is surely not a moment I wish to relive.
Probably nothing. Bad things happen in dark corners. Shining a little sunlight into a dark corner is almost always a good thing.
In this case, possibly a very good thing. Because even just the threat of a little sunlight being shone on your performance generally improves it. This viral TikTok video made that possibility very real in a lot of peoples minds.
So I'm guessing this video going to have an outsized impact, for the better.
I had an old roommate who was the political whistle-blower for NYC police when they lied about the number of minorities they arrest. He was instrumental in getting attention to the disproportionate number of minorities adversely affected by stop and frisk. As an analyst, he had access to the actual raw data and was the one actually creating the reports internally and decided to do speak out when, despite his reporting, the police and politicians were lying to the public.
He had an incredible background on paper (went to Harvard, numerous high level and trusted analyst positions in government, high profile Twitter account). After he leaked the information and had his 15 minutes of fame, his career was basically destroyed. I watched, first hand, over the course of the next two years how he couldn't get a job in his field anymore -- or any field for that matter. After going through his savings, he was forced to take a job working part time at a used clothing store, working for an abusive boss.
Don't underestimate the power of forever getting your name indexed in Google. He was labeled as a "gadfly" by government. Watching him struggle and what it did to his mental and physical health over was absolutely heartbreaking. I really hope this woman doesn't have the same outcome, but I am not optimistic.
I don’t think that’s the takeaway. I think the comment simply meant to shed some light on the personal consequencea of the whistleblower that might go under the radar - both for readers and the whistleblowers themselves prior to the act.
That was also my understanding. There are countries (in EU) where filming your layoff might land you in jail (privacy, obstruction of property, trade secrets).
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 88.7 ms ] threadCandace Owens is also known for her flippant suggestion that 'Hitler was trying to make Germany great again'. If the best source the BBC can come up with for the alternative POV is a nazi-adjacent social media troll, perhaps they should reconsider their cognitive biases.
You can go down as a number on the spreadsheet, or you can show everyone else they are also numbers on a spreadsheet.
Her behaviour is a first step towards a different workplace. The effectiveness is questionable, but what more can a single, non organized individual can do ?
No one's saying she did something immoral. Instead the implication is that she broke some social code. Because of course we're all operating on the assumption that corporations hold the power and we should be grateful that they take pity on us to exploit us at all.
Given how many people are willing to burn themselves out because of their job I’m going to guess not too many.
Further, engaging with bad actors (who are generally cynics rather than idiots) normalizes their standing as commentators/public figures, and gives them opportunity to push shitty ideas into public discourse. They're PR professionals who understand how to exploit the dynamics of social media very well and imho to the general detriment.
It takes a very warped view of greatness to believe it.
It's like the ice bucket challenge. Sure some people probably will fake it, but I expect many of them are real.
But, if the outcome is that all employers need to think about whether their firings/layoffs are broadcast for everyone to see and critique, I’d say that she made the world a little bit better :)
It was a very naive thing to do. I'm actually surprised that instead of laying her off they didn't just sack her, but maybe there was a delay between the meeting and her releasing it.
She got a few likes on social media though, so that's good.
In my opinion, after seeing this video, any HR department will simply say “you are being laid off” and give no other information. I imagine this could only reduce the amount of information that an HR dept would give.
This is my cynical point of view, at least.
You’re right, that is what I’d prefer also.
Besides, it's a dumb thing to do. Depending on the state you or the HR person is in you could be violating 2-party consent laws.
Every layoff should be recorded and she broke no laws.
in this same thread you replied to someone with "You offer no support for your claim."
https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law
The thing that rubbed me the wrong way is that @legitster most likely knew this, and this why they said, "could be violating ..." and then the whole comment comes off like a pro-corporate scare post to not call out shitty tactics. It is disingenuous. It is shallow and dismissive to call what she did the act of a performative millennial.
By the point this article came up, it was widely known for those paying attention that Pietsch committed no crimes in recording this.
You knew what state the other people on the call were in? Were their names even revealed? Even if they were, why would you assume others are as invested in this story that they’d seek out that info?
what state were the other two callers in? you also wrote all layoffs should be recorded knowing that it would violate law in some states. this sounds pretty disingenuous. by "paying attention" you mean someone highly invested in this like you are, with the same weirdo aggro activist tone
If you grew up filming the most trivial aspects of your life it should not be a surprise if you feel the need to film something as important as losing a job.
Personally, it wouldn't even occur to me to film such a thing let alone to post it online. I would have assumed it would be illegal to film without the other side having a clue you are filming.
If I grew up filming literally everything though the idea of it being illegal I am sure would sound ridiculous and not even enter my mind. I am sure the thought process didn't go beyond this being some potentially really good "content".
The strangest thing to me is I have been let go from a job before. It is surely not a moment I wish to relive.
Probably nothing. Bad things happen in dark corners. Shining a little sunlight into a dark corner is almost always a good thing.
In this case, possibly a very good thing. Because even just the threat of a little sunlight being shone on your performance generally improves it. This viral TikTok video made that possibility very real in a lot of peoples minds.
So I'm guessing this video going to have an outsized impact, for the better.
He had an incredible background on paper (went to Harvard, numerous high level and trusted analyst positions in government, high profile Twitter account). After he leaked the information and had his 15 minutes of fame, his career was basically destroyed. I watched, first hand, over the course of the next two years how he couldn't get a job in his field anymore -- or any field for that matter. After going through his savings, he was forced to take a job working part time at a used clothing store, working for an abusive boss.
Don't underestimate the power of forever getting your name indexed in Google. He was labeled as a "gadfly" by government. Watching him struggle and what it did to his mental and physical health over was absolutely heartbreaking. I really hope this woman doesn't have the same outcome, but I am not optimistic.
My takeaway is that he probably has a viable lawsuit and maybe pay somebody 5k for some SEO, or change his name for free.