Employee Says Entire Class of Trainees Was Laid Off After Days of Sessions

An employee went viral after sharing the moment she and a classroom of other trainees were told they were being laid off via a Zoom meeting.

Ti-Lar Bee, known as @operachick, posted about the incident on TikTok where it received more than 1.2 million views and 1,800 comments. The video can be found here.

Recent Layoffs

Layoffs typically occur when a company is restructuring or because the company is no longer able to employ a department, with the pandemic resulting in many companies restructuring and laying off many employees.

A recent survey of 722 U.S. executives conducted by PwC found that half of the firms are expecting to reduce the number of employees while 52 percent foresee a hiring freeze.

The survey also found that about 44 percent of firms expect to rescind job offers.

In recent weeks, Ford Motor, Walmart, Peloton, Tesla, Re/Max, Netflix, JPMorgan, and Carvana are just a few large companies that are already seeing layoffs this year.

The Viral Video

In the video, Bee showed a Zoom meeting on a large screen inside a training room with several other employees. She said the training was for Pink Energy, a solar energy company, and was located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Not getting laid off 4 days into training,” the on-screen text read as she showed the room.

On the Zoom call, the trainees were allegedly told they were being laid off. Bee showed other trainees sitting at desks in the room, one speaking loudly on her phone.

“In training, just got fired,” Bee said. “The whole class just got fired. Our job is no longer a part of their company.”

In the background, the other trainee can be heard telling someone over the phone that her position no longer existed.

In another TikTok, Bee said that although she didn’t “waste” much time training before the layoffs, she did reject other job offers.

She explained that they were at training since 9 a.m. and were not told about the layoffs until 4 p.m.

Viewer Reactions

More than 1,800 users commented on the post, many sharing similar experiences.

“This happened to me before,” one user commented. “We went through like 8 weeks of training. The last day, they handed out certificates and cupcakes and fired us.”

“Imagine if you turned down a job from another company,” another commented.

“Definitely not a lawsuit but you can file for unemployment,”…