Madeline Hislop* shares Whitney Sharpe’s story of calling out a group of men made “inexcusable” comments during a work call.
A young, American business woman has expertly called out a group of men making comments about her physical appearance during an online conference call.
28-year-old Whitney Sharpe, a vice president of a recruiting and staffing firm in the United States, was put in the horrible situation when one of the men on the call accidentally shared his screen with her, so she could see the messages they had been sending back and forth.
These men were employees of a potential client.
Sharpe wasted no time calling them out, filming herself doing so and posting it to TikTok in a video that has now been viewed nearly 14 million times and liked more than 2 million times.
“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 told the men on the call.
“I know that was a mistake, but… I just don’t want to see, like, locker room talk about myself.
“So if we could, I liked the product. I know it’s good.
“I know it’s tried and true, but I just want to work with a woman like before if possible.”
In the video, one of the men can be heard saying it was “inexcusable” and apologising.
Sharpe told Today.com that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the content of most of the messages, but they were mostly to do with her physical appearance – one of them had called her an “effing bombshell”, she said.
She also said the men had realised what had happened about 1 minute into the conversation, but tried to continue as normal for another 15 minutes before she had the opportunity to call them out.
“The man on the call who was sending the worst messages, when he realised [what happened] he went off camera,” she told Today.com.
“I am assuming that he needed to collect himself and figure out a game plan for himself.
“And the game plan that they had moving forward was, let’s just ignore this and not address it.
“And if I didn’t say anything, they weren’t going to address it with me.”
The saga continued when Sharpe shared another video to TikTok of the apology she later received from the company’s VP of sales, writing in the caption: “How not to apologise in corporate America 101”.
“I understand you would like to work with a female going forward, however, I do not have anyone skilled enough to assist you that is a female,” the email to Sharpe reads.
Sharpe made clear that there is no excuse to not have any women in the company that could step in.
“Red flag! Red flag! Don’t you see that as a problem in that statement alone? Why don’t you hire someone?
“There’s plenty of talented women in the field that, honestly, it would be an honour for you to have them join your company”.
Sharpe said she later received a phone call from the company’s VP of sales, who called to do “damage control, basically to save the sale”.
“He wanted to make sure I was still in their good graces so that I would continue the sale cycle and in the end buy the product from them.”
Sharpe said she had been in the process of evaluating them to become one of her company’s vendors.
“That will no longer be happening,” she said.
Going forward, Sharpe said she will use her presence on TikTok to be an advocate for women who have experienced sexual harassment at work.
“I was completely fed up with it and it’s why I posted that video, because it was not the first time that I have experienced something like this.
“Anyone who experiences something like this has a trauma response and if you know anything about trauma, people experience it in different ways, so please don’t judge me I am doing the best that I can.”
*Madeline Hislop is a journalist & editor of The Sporty Wrap, a weekly newsletter published by Women’s Agenda.
This article first appeared at womensagenda.com.au.
